


Enough of You in Me

by finnthejedi



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Depression, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, I love maria hill, Slow Burn, i like feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-24
Updated: 2017-06-08
Packaged: 2018-08-17 00:30:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 69,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8123563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/finnthejedi/pseuds/finnthejedi
Summary: Notes: You can now read this story in its entirety!
I changed the title from "It's Traumatic" to "Enough of You in Me." 
It's inspired by the Indigo Girls' song "Dairy Queen":
"There's just enough of you in me for me to have sympathy." (If the story was laid out in pages like a book, that lyric would be on the page prior to the first chapter.)
Summary: Maria Hill found purpose in her dedication to her work as an agent of SHIELD (and before that, as a Marine). Driven by an intrinsic motivation to protect lives and haunted by trauma and pain, she rose through the ranks to become Fury's deputy. Until it fell on her to destroy the organization because of the Hydra infiltration she had not foreseen. 
In the year since, Maria grappled with the consequences. One night, Natasha, who has struggled since her defection to SHIELD to live with her own demons, reaches out to her, and in the relative peace after Sokovia, the two bond over a mutual and long-standing empathy as they move forward with their lives in an increasing complex world.





	1. The Anti-Party

**Author's Note:**

> I recently discovered the pairing of Natasha and Maria and really love it. I wanted to write my own story for them.
> 
> Content warning for depression.

Maria is slumped on a couch, arm out stretched atop the cushions, head resting on her shoulder when Natasha sits beside her. She feels the sofa sink, but doesn’t shift her gaze from the back of Vision’s cape, which bounced every so often as he turned his head to look at Thor and Steve respectively when they spoke. They were having a kind of anti-party—which is to say they all had to eat (minus Vision), so pizza was ordered, and then once they were all gathered in the common room, it made more sense to mope collectively. So recently, they had partied on the top floors of the Avengers Tower overlooking New York City—actual revelries. Now they were in upstate New York in a remodeled warehouse. Now victory didn’t quite mean the same thing.

Natasha pokes Maria beneath her ribs, which finally snaps her focus to the woman beside her.

“I asked how you are doing,” Natasha said.

“And I didn’t answer you?” Maria’s holding a beer bottle, now warm, in one hand. She raps her fingers against it.

Natasha shakes her head. “Guess I couldn’t hear you over the boys having a grand time.” Considering who was gathered, the room was actually quite quiet, but Maria hadn’t heard her ask, and so Natasha couldn’t have heard her respond regardless. 

“It’s been a long week.” It didn’t feel like it had been a long anything. She had been sitting on the floor with the Avengers, watching them all fail to lift the hammer, laughing at Steve’s properness. She had been working at SHIELD HQ, assuming they were making real progress neutralizing threats to human life. That was before Tony built something that resulted in something (the fuck if she knew what was happening anymore) trying to save (read exterminate) humanity, before she had to crash three helocarriers over DC, into SHIELD HQ because they too were about to save (read kill) humanity. “It’s been a long year.”

“You saved us—a lot of us-es,” Nastha’s wearing a hoodie with sleeves long enough that she can clench the bunched fabric between her fingers and her palm. Maria is watching Natasha’s hands although (because) she knows Natasha’s eyes are fixed on her. It wasn’t her—she didn’t really save anyone. She hadn’t been the one to repair the helocarrier, been the one who programmed the targeting system that took down Project Insight. Okay, that had been her—but at that point, it had been her and Fury. Steve, Sam and Natasha did the more difficult work though, the real world saving.

“That’s the job. We save people.” Maria says this with no emotion, no inflection. But after a few seconds, she does peak through the corner of her eyes at Natasha’s face to gauge what she’s thinking (as if she could). Natasha isn’t wearing much make-up. Her green eyes blink periodically—less often than normal (as if Maria knew the normal rate for blinking).

“You’ll stay the night?” Natasha asks, giving Maria’s thigh a pat. 

“Yeah. I’ll stay until things are settled.”

“You can live here with us, you know. We have a history of taking in strays.”

Maria crosses her arms across her chest. Natasha and she are friends, probably as close as possible when one of you is (was) deputy director of SHIELD and the other is (was) their top agent who is (was) frequently sent out undercover. But they respected one another, tried to see each other when they could. Which is why Maria couldn’t fathom why Natasha was now basically patting her on the head and offering her figurative cookies to hopefully lure her out of the figurative corner in which Natasha thought she was brooding, to get a smile to replace Maria’s blank stare. 

“Speaking of…” Maria ventured, still with Natasha’s hand lightly squeezing her thigh, “how is Wanda doing?”

“Ah,” Natasha sighs, moving her eyes from Maria to the floor. There was a silence between them. Maria considered breaking it, bringing the conversation back to herself—because apparently, if nothing else, her emotions were fair game. Maria wondered if one of Natasha’s teammates asked how Maria was doing (which they wouldn’t), would she sigh and look away in a telling silence. 

“Wanda is…it is difficult, Maria. I suppose if there’s anything, there’s the fact that I happen to know someone who also came here from Eastern Europe after deciding to use my skills to help the good guys—someone else who lost the chance to live a normal life.” Natasha shrugged after she finished speaking, raised her eyebrows and gave Maria a tilted grin. “We’ll survive though.”

Maria then feels a wave of dizziness. She imagines herself flinging the bottle across the room, flipping a table, kicking a wall or committing some other form of pointless aggression—a microscopic version of the hell she sees daily. Except if she raged, the Avengers would hold her down, talk her down, and no one would get hurt, would die in the cross fire. At most, they’d have to sweep up some glass, re-plaster a wall—much better (an almost insulting understatement) than bulldozer-ing the ruins of a city, doing whatever the hell you do in the face of death and destruction. Not healing. They were past that. 

Maria had long (especially since the battle of New York though) imagined if she had watched her be crashed to the ground, her family get crushed (or substitute any such tragedy), she wouldn’t be able to go on. And it would in no way matter, Hell, after the moment (second, nanosecond or some such impossibly small time) Fury had informed her SHIELD was comprised, she wouldn’t have been sure if she could go on if she promptly hadn’t had to plot, to act to save millions of lives, including the one who was now watching her think through this frustrated agitation.

“It’s traumatic.” Natasha frowned, and she had moved her hand from Maria’s leg back to her own lap. She was gripping the lose fabric of her sleeve again.

Traumatic. That was the damn word Maria had been looking for. Sure, she had worked every day including weekends since the battle of DC, except, and only because of, a time when she had simply been too sick to move—a time which Maria distinctly remembered very much enjoying. She had been dealing (again understatement but there is no word adequate to capture the experience) with the government in the aftermath of the leak of SHIELD’s records, having to make some (more) shifty decisions, working at Stark Industries, helping Coulson, keeping an eye on the Avengers. But she had been disassociating through it all. And no one had noticed because it wasn’t like constantly working, constantly wearing a look of severity and a demeanor of indifference was anything new for her.

“Maria…”

Except maybe Natasha noticed. Natahsa had disappeared herself for a while after everything with SHIELD and thus, hadn’t seen Maria to try to take care of her (is that what this was?) sooner. Natasha who almost never opened up—although with them, not opening up was often opening up—who was as much of a shapeshifter as Maria was cement.

“We’ll survive,” Maria finally spoke again, or she assumed she did. Sometimes she wasn’t so sure. But Natasha nodded so she must have done something that stimulated a response.

“Give it some thought, Maria, staying here, I mean.”

“I said I’ll be around. I’m also going to be around Stark Industries though.”

At that, Natasha frowned. 

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Okay then.”

They both take a second to breathe.

“I just want you to take care of yourself, Maria.”

And you’re an expert on taking care of yourself now? Or so Maria wanted to say. 

“Noted,” she actually said.

More silence. In fact, the room itself had gotten more quiet it seemed. Vision had left, and Steve and Thor were now watching something whose volume Maria couldn’t hear. 

“Did you eat, Maria?”

“Really, Natasha?”

Natasha didn’t flinch at Maria snapping. But her face wasn’t Natasha’s usual calculating spy look. Her eyes reflected the concern evident in most of the damn words she had spoken to Maria since sitting down. Which made Maria feel small. Natasha was in no way being condescending, but Maria recognized that Natasha was responding to something she was doing, something about her. And that disconcerted her. At that point, Maria could probably attack Natasha, and she’d just let her—the apex of pity coming from someone who never let anyone fuck with her.

Maria needed to say something. Her silence and the fact that she knew Natasha knew that her heart was racing were not helping. She needed to refocus on the present, where she was trying to convince Natasha not to worry while she was wanting to hurt something.

“I’m okay, Natasha. You can stop.”

“Alright, Maria. But I just wanted to check. I know how it is to go a long time without anyone asking.”

“It sucks?” That last line of Natasha’s should probably have been a rhetorical statement, left to hang wisely and painfully in a new silence between them. But no.

“Yeah.”

Maria stares off, no longer particularly aware of what Thor and Steve were doing, the positioning of her own body relative to anything in the room. 

Natasha eventually speaks again, “How much longer are you planning on sitting here?”

Oh. Right. Maria was splayed out on a sofa in the living room of the compound belonging to a superhero team. A superhero team whose functioning she had a part in. Right.

“I should go to bed.” Maria said what she figured Natasha wanted to hear. 

“We should all go to bed.” That Natasha said loudly, for the guy’s benefit. 

“I’ve forgotten what it feels like to be tired,” Maria says as she tries to will herself to move.

“When we first got back, I had to tell people to stop talking at me. I had to keep repeating to them I needed to sleep, you know, now that we weren’t not in any immediate danger anymore. That wasn’t tiredness. That was…painful. So no, I don’t remember what tired feels like either.”

Now that they weren’t in any danger. She forgot (or never knew) that as well. She’s wasn’t going to go there with Natasha though.

“Did you bring your own cloths to sleep in, or do you need to borrow some?”

“I have cloths.”

“Good, I’m running out since I’ve been letting Wanda wear mine. I need to make time to take that girl shopping. Maybe tomorrow…”

Maria stands up, confused that the ground feels so firm beneath her, just confused really.

“Say good night to Maria,” Natasha says this to Thor and Steve.

“Sleep well,” Steve says back, turning toward them and smiling.

Maria goes to walk away, but then Natasha puts her hand on her shoulder, stopping her. 

“Good night, Maria. It was good seeing you again.” 

“Yeah. You too.”

After Maria exits the room, and starts down the hall, she looks back at Natasha—Natasha who would probably go then to check on Wanda, who now was an expert on caring too much, who once upon a time, Maria had given Clint the order to kill.


	2. Raining Down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who read the first chapter!
> 
> Here's the second chapter.

Maria is shooting rapidly, in the firing range, not wearing any protective gear over her ears. She wonders how exactly it would be training to muffle the blast when real life gun fights never give you time to prepare. Anyway, the noise is comfortingly familiar.

It had been raining all day. Maria had awoken to grey outside her window, her vision fuzzy in the dimly-light room. She had reached to her side to pull the chain on the lamp on the table beside her bed, but there wasn’t a lamp there. She had developed that routine in her apartment in New York City, getting up every morning long before the sun rose, when she needed the light to be able to move around at all. Maria’s arm had fallen on the empty table, resting there for a second while Maria laid in this bed in this (albeit the room that had been assigned to her) room in the compound. She had spent enough nights away from home not to expect home, yet there she was.

Maria imagined that scene as the center of a target—the grey scale of the room swirling into a single speck, the bullseye—which Maria sprayed with bullets. She had found some comfort lying there, warm at least, less dizzy. Outside droplets rained from the clouds—blobs (streaks?) of water that had evaporated who knows where, built up in clouds swept over other indistinct places until they could no longer bear the weight, and now they splattered on the ground outside her window. Or she assumed it did. From where she lay, Maria could only see the sky, and it probably wasn’t safe anymore to assume rain puddled on the ground. In light of everything, why the hell would it?

Chunks of Earth, dredged up from hundreds of meters down, crumbling brick, and all the other innumerable things that make up a city, had rained down on Sovokia. Fiery bits of deformed steel had rained down on D.C. Maria sees Natasha’s green eyes from last night, scrutinizing her, her own blue eyes dulled to grey in the bathroom mirror that morning as she brushed her teeth. She shot at their eyes, the bullets passing through the pupils. Aliens had literally rained down on New York City. But they had averted clouds of radioactive dust from raining on the east coast. There was that.

Maria pulls the trigger, but nothing happens—no reverberations, no crisp, definitive pop. The target she had been aiming at stands untouched in front of her, and she realizes she had been firing an empty gun. The room is silent except for echoes which bounce through her skull. She drops the gun, and it clatters to the ground, useless and harmless. 

“So…you come here often then?”

Natasha is leaning against the door frame, arms folded across her chest, legs crossed at the ankles—smirking (like Natasha does). Maria pushes away the strands of hair that fell from the ponytail and stuck to the sweat on her face, leaving one hand on her forehead, partially shielding her eyes. That morning, she had stood in front of her mirror, eyes focused on the sink, trying to tie her hair into the tight bun she preferred. But her fingers wouldn’t recall that specific muscle memory. She had snapped one band, and after the sting of it hitting her, she had just pulled her hair back into a lose ponytail.

“No. First time actually.”

Natasha shakes her head. “Fairly good for a beginner then.”

Very funny. The gun now laying on the floor at her feet felt more familiar than her own reflection, her hair, the immediate physical surroundings. 

“Did you sleep well last night?”

“Sure.”

“You’re lying.”

Yeah. Of course she was lying. She hadn’t slept well since she was a child, except she hadn’t slept well then either. Somewhere between then and now though she must have been knocked over the head hard enough to count as solid sleep.

“Okay. Did you sleep well?” Maria asks.

“No.” Natasha stands up straight. “How could I?”

Maria offers no response to the blatant honesty.

Natasha shrugs. “Did it help?”

“Huh?”

Natasha nods toward the bullet-hole-ridden targets now behind Maria. “Shredding those, I mean.”

“Does it help you?” Maria rests her hands on her hips. She’s the right mood for this.

Natasha moves toward Maria, passed her, and picks up Maria’s gun, spinning it around her finger. “I prefer the punching bag, really, it stimulates more of the senses.”

It also hurts more.

Maria reaches for the gun dangling from Natasha’s finger. As Maria’s own fingers touch the barrel, Natasha (lightly) jabs Maria below the shoulder with her free hand. Maria feels Natasha’s knuckles press against her chest muscles, make her step back. She grabs Natasha’s wrist, her thumb easily overlapping the tips of her other fingers.

“You have a small wrist.”

Maria can still feel pulsing in her hand from the gun’s feedback. She wonders if Natasha can feel it through her skin, fears her shaking will disrupt Natasha’s pulse.

And then Natasha is laughing, letting Maria continue to hold her wrist, looking at her like they were paused, like they were watching a recording of themselves sparring in order to critique their form. As if she’s hovering right above their heads, Maria sees a woman with brown hair, a red-headed woman still with a gun in one hand, the other fist resting on her opponent’s chest.

At some point in the near future, after more staring between the two woman, and maybe between Maria and the two women before Maria felt her feet on the ground again and her face flush, Natasha stops laughing. “We’ll spar again soon, before we both get rusty.”

“Sure.”

But Maria, taking advantage of Natasha’s presumably consuming desire to cheer her up, flips Natasha, who then lands on her back on ground. It’s not really a mat, more like a rubber rug. Maybe she should have thought this through more, but she does find herself grinning. Okay, so that felt pretty good.

Still on the ground, Natasha grabs Maria’s hands and pulls her down, causing Maria to have to somersault to avoid falling on her hands and knees. She lands on the ground next to Natasha, legs stretched out in front of her.

Did it help? Maria thinks.

“So now we’re lying on the ground where everyone’s shoes were,” Natasha says, turning to meet Maria’s eyes.

Not everyone had dragged dirt in on their shoes—only those who came to the shooting range (which might be everyone). “We could go outside if you want.”

“I’d love to. I’m from Russia, Maria. We used to train in the snow and then come inside to an unheated building. Rain to me is like a slight breeze to most people—I just don’t notice it.”

“So you walked up hill both ways to school?”

“What?” Natasha squints. “Is that an expression?”

“Yeah, it means—”

“Thank you but I got it from context. And I only just now told you I’m from Russia, which is to say English—”

“Isn’t your first language. Got it.” Maria would have to overlook the pesky fact that Natasha knew everything. 

“Go tell it to Vision.”

“We’re not on a first name basis.”

“Well, that might make it difficult then.”

Maria and Natasha help each other to their feet.

“Hey, Hill, watch yourself—teasing me about my traumatic past. And here I suspected the rumors of your cold-heartedness were just sexism…”

“Pun intended?”

“Oh, I am so close to knocking you down again.”

“And you called me cold-hearted!”

“Yes, I did.”

So, from that exchange, they figured out they were both cold-hearted. Probably sadistic too. But neither would ask the other if she was okay. Natasha wouldn’t have pulled her down if she didn’t know Maria could safely roll out of it. And Maria couldn’t hurt Natasha period, while playing or otherwise, especially otherwise. 

They could play (or train—whatever it’s called), but at the end of the day, Natasha was the superhero—which made Maria the janitor. She cleaned up the (political) mess after the superheroes were done. She could open figurative and literal doors for them, but she couldn’t go through. But that’s what got the job done. That’s the infrastructure that saves lives. If she had to keep her head down and repeat “yes, sir,” so be it. She’d go on sweeping—as long as she didn’t have to sweep literal rubble (as if).

“What?” Natasha asked. Maria shoves her hands in the pockets of her cargo pants. She hadn’t realized she’d been staring, but now that she did, she noticed Natasha’s hair at fallen neatly back into place. Except, a few strands were sticking up, maybe even Natasha couldn’t escape static electricity. 

“You look sad again, Maria.” 

And Natasha is back to worrying about her.

Sad. Maria repeats the word in her head. “I’m not sad. Why would I be sad?” She imagined sadness to be a luxury, a privilege possessed by those who had nothing about which to be sad.

Maria finds herself waiting for Natasha to speak again, to suggest something—like maybe that they should go eat lunch. Maria hadn’t eaten that morning, or last night, since the morning prior when she was using the physical sensation of picking at and chewing a bagel to help her focus on reports she needed to read. She’d go if Natasha suggested it—resisting at first but letting Natasha drag her. The outcome would be the same.

Natasha did drag her. Or something. “I’ve got some left-over pizza I wanted to offer you.”

They take the elevator to Natasha’s floor. Maria follows her down the hall, feeling like she’s floating. Until she walks into Natasha who had stopped outside her door to open it. 

“Are you okay? Seriously, Maria?” Natasha has the door open, but she’s standing in it waiting for a response. 

No? It was a question she was actually considering asking herself. And her internal state never registered in her conscious thoughts. But then she had never felt like all the external stimuli were passing through mind without registering. That wasn’t true either, but she didn’t think about why it wasn’t.

“Maria?”

“Yeah?”

Natasha sighed. “I’m going to go heat up the pizza. You go sit down.” Natasha points into her room, which Maria enters and then perches on the foot of Natasha’s bed. When Natasha is sufficiently convinced Maria’s not going to run off, she hurries down the hall. Natasha’s room is mostly empty still too. She’s got a stack of books on her desk, a tablet (and a lamp) on her nightstand. Maria had switched the light on and was moving toward the desk to read the spines when Natasha returns. She places the plates on her bed, right on her blanket, and goes to Maria’s side. 

“Russian,” Natasha says, picking up a book and fanning it for Maria to see. “I’ve got some in French and Latin too, somewhere.”

“Oh.”

Natasha lays the book back on the desk and goes to sit on her bed. She had microwaved the pizza so it was soggy, and the pieces that were stacked on top of each other had melted together. Maria takes a piece from the pile, but in trying to separate it, tears it in half. Natasha snorts, bringing her hand to cover her mouth as she chews. Maria bits into the tip of the droopy pizza. She’d never microwave pizza, but she’d probably have another piece now.

“I thought you were going to take Wanda shopping today?” Maria asks, three slices later while she’s taking a break to let the pizza settle.

Natasha is sitting against a pillow with her legs crossed. “The coffee tasted too bitter this morning. The butter wouldn’t melt on the toast. We’ll try again tomorrow—just washed some cloths in the meantime.”

A smile forms on Maria’s face. She’s still sitting on the edge of Natasha’s bed, her back straight and fingers intertwined in her lap. She has to turn her head to look at Natasha.  
“You should come with us.”

“I’m not sure Wanda would feel comfortable with me around…”

“Wanda’s not going to feel comfortable at all.”

“Less comfortable then.”

“Perhaps."

“Don’t hurt her for what you think is my benefit.”

“Maria, I’m not running a charity here. I just think we should all hang out.”

“Is that what you’re doing here?”

“What?”

“Following me around, feeding me?”

“It’s both.”

Maria remains still, despite the cold pricking at her skin, which makes her want to twitch.

“I’m not the most perceptive person when it comes to emotions, but you’re not acting like yourself.”

Maria didn’t feel up to correcting Natasha on either of her claims. Natasha climbs across her bed to be closer to Maria.

Maria let her shoulders loosen a bit. She’d get up if Natasha tried to comfort her by touching her shoulder or leg again though. But Natasha isn’t even smiling sympathetically. 

“Would you ever let me win, if we were sparring or something?” Maria asks.

“Why are you asking?”

Maria knows Natasha can master any role she needs to play. After all, she had sent Natasha off on missions so many times to do just that—to be a situational truth, to give whoever whatever they needed in that present in order to later get what they needed. Natasha must be imagining a void in Maria’s life. Which is why she had come and was acting out the role of supportive friend. It’s force of habit—like Maria turning on the lamp.

“Just tell me, Natasha, if you knew I needed the boost, would you let me win?”

Natasha closes her eyes as she thinks. “Does it really matter?”

Really being the opportune word. Yes, Maria, I’d lie to you. But it doesn’t really matter. As long as it makes you feel better. The joke’s on her though—there is no better (or worse). 

“Why?”

“No. No, Maria, I wouldn’t. That isn’t fair to you. You deserve better.”

Natasha is lying. Natasha is letting Maria win (so to speak) by telling her she would never let her win. Between the rain and the noise from the gun shots, Maria can barely follow the conversation, can’t keep herself from forgetting her most recent thoughts. She might have a headache.

“I’m going to go get some work done.” Maria gets up. She gathers the plates. “I’ll take these back to the kitchen. Thank you.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow then!” 

It’s an invitation, a reminder—but Maria also hears it as a jab, knowing Natasha would like to come out on top.

Maria leaves without saying anything else, feathers ruffled or not.

After putting the dishes in the dishwasher, Maria goes back to her room and without changing, lays on the bed.


	3. The Mall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I return with a third chapter. I have had a lot going on so I've had much more time to think about writing than actually writing.
> 
> This chapter is somewhat less angsty, for the record. 
> 
> Thank you for reading. I would love to read any thoughts/ comments. : )

Maria had volunteered to drive. If Natasha could insist upon her coming, she could insist upon making herself useful. Wanda sits in the passenger seat beside Maria, scrunched in the middle, her gaze fixed on a point on the road ahead of them. Natasha is leaning forward in her seat in the back, the seatbelt straining against her leather jacket, like she might do to participate in a conversation happening in the front. But no one is talking.

Vision had wanted to come (cultural field trip, he insisted), and the current silence almost made her wish Natasha had let him (girls only, Natasha objected). He’d be asking (i.e. bombarding her with) questions as they drove. Maria caught a glimpse of the backseat through the rearview mirror and imagined Vision sitting beside Natasha, with perfect posture (except he would move his hands from his lap to the seat next to him to his knees, unsure of where to put them). Or maybe he’d pass the time by giving them a history lesson, having spent the night while the humans were sleeping doing research.

“Did you know malls really started expanding during post-WWII suburbanization?”

Realistically, Vision would say something less vague, more intelligent, but she personally didn’t know history beyond the common wisdom, high school level explanation. In fact, she’d be willing to bet Natasha knew more US history than she did. Because she was Natasha. Maria knew history around conflicts, significant events—anything not civilian.

“Maria…”

They’re stopped at a light now, having left the forested area and entered the relatively congested commercial area of town. Maria had learned to drive in a heavily populated area, so the traffic they picked up still seemed light to her.

“So Maria…”

Only when she puts her foot on the gas to accelerate through the intersection does Maria realize Natasha is talking to her.

“Yeah?” Maria finally responds.

“Did you hang out at the mall when you were a kid, Maria?”

“Why are you asking?” Beside that pesky little thing called small talk that so many people, usually not Natasha though, loved.

“Why?” Right after Natasha asked this, Maria foresaw Natasha continuing with some offshoot of ‘just asking.’

“Just curious,” Natasha says, but her tone suggested more than curiosity. Either way, Maria wants to make eye contact with her, to say “Well, we don’t do ‘just curious. Therein lies the beauty,” but even without meeting her gaze, she can picture Natasha directing her eyes forward, tilting her head ever so slightly to indicate Wanda. Humor me. For Wanda’s sake.

“In 1000ft, your destination will be on the right,” the voice of the GPS on Maria’s phone spoke.

They’re at an outdoor mall, smaller stores surrounding a central courtyard decorated with small trees with strings of white lights strung on their branches. Since it is mid-morning on a weekday, mostly older adults and women with young children stroll through the area. Natasha had compiled a list of the stores at which they should shop, which was more characteristic of her, Maria thought. Maria stands a bit away from the pair as Wanda and Natasha discuss their plan of action to hit all the stores Natasha considered important to buy Wanda everything she would need. Maria readies herself to tag along.

Later when Maria and Natasha are alone, waiting for Wanda to try on clothes, Natasha asks again, “You never answered my question. Did you hang out at the mall?”

Natasha is sitting close to her, close enough that Natasha could touch her knee to Maria’s. Even through her jeans, the contact feels almost ticklish. She jerks her knee away, and Natasha chases it, tapping her knee against Maria’s once more. Some bags are sitting on the floor between their legs, which rustle with the movement.

“Yeah,” Maria says, “every Friday evening, came with a big group of friends so my father wouldn’t know I was going to see a boy. But then once we got there, I’d sneak off with my boyfriend who was definitely the star player of our school’s football team, and we’d sit on the edge of a fountain with neon lights tinting its water, intoxicated by our young love and the chlorine, mesmerized by the bright lights reflecting off the coins on the bottom, and eating a greasy hot pretzel like those dogs eat spaghetti in that one Disney movie.”

“Lady and the Tramp?”

“The hell if I know. But probably.”

“Overlooking the fact that I know more about American movies than you who presumably grew up here, your parents had to bride you once a year to come shopping to make sure you had a sufficient supply of jeans, flannel shirts and combat boots, right?”

“My aunt,” Maria said.

“Hmmm?”

“My father never got clothes for me from the mall. Thrift shop. Nothing I’d actually want. He wouldn’t have me getting anything I would want.” And they only had a black and white television as well on which you could watch the network channels through static if you played some with the bunny ears first. She only touched the television when her father was out, out at some job he might be working at that point or passed out drunk enough that a little noise wouldn’t disturb him. No VCR or tapes.

“Sorry,” Natasha said. Maria had partially imagined Natasha joking that that explained Maria’s current military-surplus fashion sense.

“To be fair, when I was a teenager, I’d go to the arcade on my own accord. And yeah, I did wear combat boots.”

Natasha put her hands up, a smile forming on her face. “Right, credit where credit is due.”

Maria smiled as well, glad that Natasha went along with the change of topic. “Last I checked, I still had some high scores. Ironically, though, I was only good at the games that didn’t require good accuracy. I could dodge the alien ships shooting at me or the space junk flying at me, jump over lava or punch or stab the bad guys, but I just never got the hang of those games where you had to actually fire the toy gun at the screen. It was kind of a running joke actually…”

“You’re being serious, aren’t you?”

“You know me, I’m not the person who makes stuff up or exaggerates, am I?”

“Except for two minutes ago when you told me you had a whole bunch of friends and a hot boyfriend.”

“I don’t recall saying hot.”

“He was the football quarterback. He was hot, regardless of actual looks.”

“So now you’re an expert on high school culture and the psyche of teenage girls?”

“I could go undercover.”

“Oh! See, if you had any real experience, you’d force that mission on some lower level agent.”

Natasha titled her head and frowned.

“Nat, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t be rubbing it in.”

“Rubbing what in? Really, Maria, it’s fine.”

The sit in silence, beside the sound of Maria’s leg shaking against the bag.

“What gave it away,” Maria finally says.

“That you were making that story up? In general, you like small talk about as much as you like inefficiency and rule-breaking. And, you described every cliché in the movies.”

“You’re giving me too much credit for knowing movies…but also, the ‘90s kind of were exactly like the clichés.”

“So was Russia.”

“I’m sorry.”

“That was a joke, Maria.”

Then Natasha presses her palm on Maria’s thigh, to hold it still. “Do you jiggle your leg like that when you’re addressing Congress?

And Maria slaps Natasha’s hand away. No. Because Congress doesn’t make her this self-aware. Congress doesn’t make her feel like they can see her thoughts, like there’s all these eyes watching her. She would never let them. She would never let anyone get the best of her. But Natasha is making her squirm, panic.

“Ow, damn. Sorry, Maria.”

“It’s fine.” Maria basically whispers these words, and as she’s speaking, Natasha leans back, puts her hands behind her head and rolls her eyes toward the ceiling.

  
“We’d have been in constant competition, Maria, about grades, about sports. Rivals.”

“Who’s talking in movie clichés now?

“You were teacher’s pet?”

“I got expelled.”

“Yeah, right. What could you of all people ever have possibly done to get expelled?”

“I must have told you about this before…I did! We were taking a break from some work, about one in the morning I’d say, drinking and looking out all seriously at the city. Oh! That was Pepper. Sorry.”  
“So now you’re saying Pepper knows something about you that I don’t.”

“Yeah.” In that moment, Maria realizes that Natasha knows next to nothing about her. She knew the facts about Natasha from intel, but she could imagine Natasha hadn’t attended as many briefings about her.

“Did you read my record with SHIELD, after you leaked everything online?”

Maybe I did. Maybe I didn’t. What’s it to you?”

“Most of Congress did. The FBI. The CIA. Doesn’t matter, Fury didn’t leave anything interesting about me lying around.” Maria was just curious, curious if maybe Natasha cared enough to poke through her file.

“Fury knows more about you too!”

“Coulson did as well! We used to hang out.” Coulson does, Maria corrects herself. Then she realizes she probably shouldn’t have said that, or at least not have said it like that.

  
“Maria Hill, tell me right now! No, wait, this sounds like a good story so let’s wait until Wanda is done so she can hear it as well. We’ll get lunch, and you can tell us all your most embarrassing stories.”

“Maybe that’s personal. Maybe it is painful to recall.”

“Is Commander Hill admitting to having some feelings?”

“I don’t know…has the Black Widow gone out of her way to help a new friend get settled?” Also, to support an old friend who she had assumed needed the company. Or who she just wanted to torture, to pin down and bat around a bit before finally walking off indefinitely when something more interesting came up like a cat might do to a mouse. Or a spider might do to its prey. That probably would have been a better analogy, but Maria never claimed to be overly creative.

“Come on, Maria. You told Pepper.”

“She’s my boss! She could have decided to do a lie detector test any time she wanted to get some gossip out of me.” Maria decides that since Natasha was being so nice to Wanda, she had to take it out on her to balance things.

“And the great Commander Hill couldn’t pass a lie detector test? And to think, I have always felt safe knowing you were there while we were on missions.”

“That’s sweet. Thank you. And yes, I could get around a lie detector if I wanted to, but I didn’t, or I wouldn’t have had it ever come up. I wouldn’t have felt the need to lie to a friend slash CEO about my past.”

“Aren’t you lying to a friend right now?”

Maria wasn’t so sure—about the answer to that question or in general, what they were talking about. “I could out lie you any day.” Because that made sense. The doors and mirrors visible to Maria from the bench they’re sitting outside the fitting room are kind of tilting.

“You. Could. Not.” Natasha rolls her eyes. Maria could not.

Then Wanda exited, back in the jeans and hoodie Natasha lent her, an assortment of clothes hanging over her arm.

“What did you think?” Natasha asks as she stands up.

“They’re fine, I guess.”

“Don’t be like Maria here.” Natasha imitates Maria’s voice, a slower, lower and less eloquent version of Maria’s voice anyway, i.e. not Maria’s voice at all. “I have seven of the exact same outfit, cargo pants and black shirt, all hanging in my closet sorted by the day of the week.”

Maria thought for a second that she saw Wanda’s otherwise emotionless expression shift to curiosity. Maybe curiosity, definitely not amusement though, which was further evidence that Natasha was acting purely to torment Maria because if Natasha had wanted to entertain Wanda, she would be able to entertain Wanda. By that obvious logic, since she was getting to Maria, she must have wanted to get at her emotions. Maria could hear the beating of her heart as throbbing in her ears as she thought about Wanda squinting at them, raising an eyebrow, anything that signaled some wonder about what was going on between Natasha and Maria.

Natasha’s finger poking Maria’s forehead breaks her trance.

“Where do you want to eat, Wanda?” Natasha turns back to Wanda. “Maria was just about to tell us some fun stories. Weren’t you, Maria?”

Natasha reaches her hand to Maria. To help her stand up, Maria figured. Maria would probably need both of Natasha’s hands to steady herself, and even then, she imagined her own arm turning stretchy and gooey and utterly useless for lifting herself. She jumps to her feet without any help.

Once standing, she wobbles some, and Natasha steadies her, firmly gripping her shoulder. Natasha had done the same thing yesterday and the day before, but today…Maria hadn’t heard if Wanda had answered about food, but damn if she hadn’t just stepped off one of those rides where you spin the car with the wheel in the center, which meant the last thing Maria wanted to do was eat. She’d tell Natasha all the stories she wanted to hear if it would give her excuse to never take a bite.

When Natasha and Wanda go to pay, Maria sneaks off to the bathroom. She reasons enough time has passed since they left that she can claim to have to pee without raising any suspicions that she might just need a moment to breathe. A moment away from Natasha’s suffocating teasing. That she might need to splash some cold water on her face, which is exactly what she does. She imagines the water boiling as it hits her skin, the way water dropped on a heated frying pan sizzles. Maybe she’s getting sick. Beside feeling so flushed, it could explain why she fell asleep in the middle of the day yesterday, without even taking off her boots, which she usually can’t do, and sleeping until morning, waking only around midnight to change and have a glass of juice. But she feels fine, as long as feeling dislodged and dislocated don’t disqualify her from feelings fine.

Maria rests her palms on the edge of the sink and leans forward, her head hanging so her chin touches her chest. She could never leave this bathroom. Maybe somehow she could accept herself coming undone like this, but she could never accept giving everyone who had been rooting for her innately fragile (female) composure to crumble what they wanted. She would not let anyone see her in any state where she isn’t perfectly collected. Not that they’d be at this random, small town department store, but Maria can see her reflection in the row of mirrors above the sinks.

  
Natasha and Wanda approach, chattering about something. Maria lets her hair down, quickly combing her fingers through it, which she needs to wash, and then pulls her hair back again and tightens the band around it. She probably got traces of grease on her hands from touching her hair so she rinses them, wiping the water on her pants afterward. Without another glance in any of the mirrors, Maria leaves the bathroom. Once she’s back with Natasha and Wanda, she takes from them the bags they are carrying. She would make herself useful.


	4. Origin Story

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, I bring in some of my headcanons about Maria. Although some is drawn from her character in the comics. Also, I'm just having some fun here.
> 
> Thanks for reading!

When they sit down to lunch, Maria fidgets with the napkin on the table, wrapping and unwrapping it around the bundled silverware. Wanda’s taking in the restaurant’s atmosphere, looking at the photos lined up on the wall documenting its history, beginning in black and white, continuing through grainy-yellow images to a bright picture of three generations of the restaurant’s owners in front of a banner that proclaimed the 75th anniversary.

Maria’s aunt had told her that some of her ancestors had owned a bakery on the Southside of Chicago back before World War II, before her family had solidly become a military family. Her grandmother (mother’s mother) had once shown Maria the location of the old bakery, now a liquor store (not the one Maria’s father frequented). Her aunt had on the shelf in her living room between the pages of the thick dictionary she had used in college handwritten recipes, the letters straight and the separate columns of print aligned in a way that impressed even Maria. When Maria’s aunt had first shown it to Maria, then quite young, during one of the rare occasions her father had let her visit her aunt, she had looked up at her aunt, only to watch her slam the book and slide it back between her other books.

“You mother inherited the baking skills,” her aunt had said, and they never looked at it again, at least not together. Her aunt had cooked for them, once she had come to live with her, but since Maria had spent her early years eating mostly white bread, she couldn’t confirm or deny her aunt’s skills. And at that point, Maria considered everything her aunt gave her a luxury that sparked guilt and a fear that bad things would soon happen.

Maria meets the eyes of Wanda and Natasha who are looking up from the menus. They all had their own tragedies.  
“This is a nice restaurant,” Wanda observes.

Natasha shrugs. “Kind of middle of the road. I’ll show you a nice restaurant next time we’re in the city.” Maria tightens her grip on her menu, wishing she had made Wanda’s observation.  
Wanda frowns, a light pink tinting her cheeks—to which Natasha responds by adding “Sorry, I’ve been to all kinds of ridiculous places.” Then she takes a roll and focuses her attention on buttering it.

“There was a little café beneath the apartment we lived in,” Wanda says, looking at Maria whose eyes jump down to the menu, “we’d go there on our—Pietro and my—birthday. That’s the only time I was at any restaurant.” Maria had been slowly raising her eyes again to look back at her. Wanda’s blinking back tears but also smiling. “And once after Pietro and I were in a play at school,” Wanda finishes. She takes a sip of her Mountain Dew, which Maria had suggested she try when they were deciding what to drink. 

“When I was about your age, it got me through many late nights studying for exams. It’s almost a rite of passage,” Maria had argued.

“It’s the most toxic in a category of toxic things!” Natasha had said.

“It’s great!” 

“Wanda, like I said earlier, don’t listen to a word Maria says. This time I’m serious.”

“I’d like to try it?”

“Of course! Get whatever you want. Despite what you might think, superheroes don’t always have the best diet.”

“Nat, I don’t think superheroes being healthy is a stereotype. In fact, I think it’s the opposite. Blame Stark,” Maria gives Natasha a crocked smile, wanting to wink, but wondering about what she’d be winking.

“Yeah, Tony sort of ruined it for the rest of us.”

Maria bites her lip at the (her) mention of Stark. But when she peeks through the corner of her eyes at Wanda, she’s preoccupied tasting bits of the various types of rolls—pretzel, wheat, sesame, and normal from what Maria can tell.

“What are you getting?” Natasha asks.

“Spaghetti,” Maria replies almost before Natasha finishes speaking. “Spaghetti is my favorite, okay.” Maria closes the menu, lays it on the table in front of her and folds her hands over it.  
“I thought it was chicken-fried steak.”

Shut up, Natasha, Maria thinks. She’s already nauseous from her existence in this time and place, with the other people existing in this same time and place.

“How can something be steak and chicken at the same time?” Wanda asked.

“It’s basically steak that is fried the way you might make fried chicken,” Natasha explains. When Wanda doesn’t nod or say “ah,” she continues “the meat is breaded and then cooked in boiling oil.”

Maria is rubbing at her forehead—queasy because Natasha just had to describe a food to which she knew Maria had an aversion.

“And that’s your favorite food?” Wanda directs this question to Maria.

“No!” Maria hadn’t meant to scream.

“It makes Maria throw up,” Natasha says calmly, as if she were sharing some common and neutral fact. Like saying the sky is blue, not bringing up a time when Maria’s stomach had imploded.

“Once we were tracking down this real nasty guy whose next actions we had to intercept. We followed him to a restaurant to gather intel, and Maria got food poisoning from the chicken-fried steak.”

“Why are we talking about this before lunch? Haven’t you lost your appetite?” Maria asks.

“I only had a few bites of toast this morning,” Wanda says, “Truthfully, I was too anxious about going out with you too to eat anymore. So I’m hungry now regardless.”

“Sorry, Maria, I’m immune too. That hardly ranks on my list of disgusting things. Remember when—”

“It’s an evolutionary adaptation! If the berries make you vomit, you avoid them. That’s how humanity made it far enough to have developed technology to deep fry anything.”

Natasha’s laughing, hand covering her mouth, and Wanda has that spark of curiosity in her eyes again. Maria imagines Wanda’s silently asking if there is anything going on between them. So Maria wants to silently answer that Natasha and she went way back, but she’s not sure what they are now. Except she does. They’re friends, like they’re both friends with Wanda. Nothing had suggested otherwise.

Except there was more to the chicken-fried steak story, which Maria wondered if Natasha remembered, if that was the reason she brought it up at all. As a sign, a clue. Either that, or Maria is reading between the lines so much she reading a different story. She looks at Natasha, who gives her a titled smile. She wanted to reach across the table and rub her thumb against Natasha’s cheek the way some years ago, after they had bugged the location where their target would be in the early morning and had returned to their safe house, Natasha had comforted her.

Natasha had just finishing reporting back to SHIELD, which Maria usually did, but at that point, couldn’t. She had sat on bed next to where Maria was lying in a fetal position and dabbed her face with a cold cloth until Maria’s heartrate calmed and her skin felt less hot, finally letting her hand rest along the curve of Maria’s jaw. “One day, we’ll get out of this mess,” Maria remembers her whispering. She remembers Natasha pulling her closer, until she was curled against her chest and Natasha’s arms were wrapped around her back.

That next morning, as they had waited for extraction, Maria had tried to thank Natasha for her kindness, but when they made eye contact, Natasha’s face was blank and cold. “You were feverish last night, Maria. You’re not making any sense,” Natasha had said and looked away. 

It was years later, and they were still in this mess. Actually, in retrospect, there was no mess then, not compared to now anyway. She had been so young then, so naïve, acting out a role in someone’s machinations. A role that had drawn her in far more than her position in the Marines that she had spent more time training than doing ever had.

“She’ll have the spaghetti too,” Natasha says and pulls the menu from beneath Maria’s hands and gives it to the waiter.

“He didn’t even ask me!” Maria says.

“I know, but since I was already talking I figured I’d save you the trouble.”

“I think ‘ordering for you’ is a relationship red flag”

“Technically, she didn’t order for you. She just told the waiter your order,” Wanda joins.

“Turning my friends against me! That’s another red flag.” Maria struggles to say this without breaking into laughter. Natasha and Wanda are both laughing which makes keeping a straight face even harder for Maria. She gives in and finds herself laughing beside them, feels herself close her eyes and slouch a bit in her chair. 

Once Maria can control her laughter, she breaths in, listening to the chatter in the background, dishes clanking. She exhales, and a hint of a smile forms. When she opens her eyes, she realizes Natasha is staring at her, her head resting on her folded hands. Wanda is sitting on her hands, but is otherwise watching her too.

“Now tell us about how you were expelled from school.” Natasha has the same face now that Maria had seen countless times through a one-way mirror. It’s her tell-me-what-I-want-to-know face.

“It’s not a big deal. It’ll ruin the mood.”

Natasha and Wanda look at each other and shrug. “Shit happens,” Natasha says, and Wanda nods.

“That’s my explanation too then. Shit happens.”

“Shit does not just happen to you, Maria. You have everything so well--”

“I get it.” Maria puts her hands up. “Okay, okay…I was fourteen, half way through the first semester. There had been this bully all along since we started that August. He and his sidekicks tortured some other students—low-key stuff like knocking books away from them to more sinister stuff like beating them up and stealing from them. The teachers could have cared less. One day, during our remedial English class, I beat the crap out them. Two guys. No big deal.”

Natasha is failing at suppressing more laughter. “Sorry, sorry…go on. I can just…so vividly picture you doing this,” Natasha struggles to say.

“I scared the hell out of the teacher. She was this young woman, probably just out of school,” Maria continues, “really nice, but she cared too much, like I think she thought I couldn’t read so she offered to give me extra help in the mornings. I went along with it to humor her, let her feel like she was saving the world. Then I’d be reading like War and Peace in the back of her class. I’m sorry, that was a tangent, wasn’t it? What were we talking about?” Maria looks down to hide how red her face had to be turning.

“Wait, wait, what, Maria?” Natasha had stopped laughed to better articulate her sincere confusion.

“Did you…pretend to have trouble in class so the teacher would pay attention to you?” Wanda asks.

“Wanda! Thank you! It makes sense now,” Natasha says.

Maria thinks they must have turned the heat up a few hundred degrees. “No!” Not at first, she hadn’t anyway. “I just didn’t turn in any homework. On principle. So I failed everything, which gave everyone the impression I was legitimately struggling. But I…” And Maria goes quiet, feeling her throat go dry and tears want to form. She knows Natasha at least thinks her story is hilarious, that it is so damn funny that once upon a time, she hadn’t been perfectly disciplined. She shouldn’t have begun the story at all, not truthfully anyhow. She could have lied. She couldn’t have lied. Natasha would have called her out. Because Natasha didn’t care if she had to use her superspy skills to interrogate a so-called friend for embarrassing childhood stories. As long as she got what she wanted. Maria was hopeless to resist the superhero, hopeless period. She bites the inside of her lip until she tastes blood. But she’s able to force back the tears and look up at Natasha with a wide smile.

Before Natasha or Wanda could say anything, she tries to begin again. “Where was I? I said I had taken out the bullies, scared the teacher—”

“Maria, you don’t have to.”

She does have to. Because in Natasha’s pseudo-concerned eyes, she now sees the eyes of her teacher almost twenty years ago, frightened and dark. She had had dark eyes and long, dark hair she pushed behind her ear when she leaned toward Maria to help her. Maria runs her tongue over where she had bit her lip. “Come on, it’s a really funny story,” she says.

“Did you have a crush on her?” Wanda asks, and Maria can’t blame her for it. Wanda’s young, and that’s just where young people’s minds go. Or maybe she deserved that, Maria thought, for the time she called Wanda weird.

“Wanda, didn’t you promise you weren’t going to read the mind of your friends?” 

“I didn’t.” Wanda looks from Natasha to Maria. “It’s obvious.” Maria can’t help but wonder what else is obvious.

“It is not! Where did you even get that from? I had watched these two guys terrorize students and get away with it. Or no, if by having a crush you mean having the desire to help, then yeah, I did. That morning while she was writing something on the board, one of the guys threw something at her. When she snapped around to scowl at and lecture us, they spat some disgusting, violent words at her. And I snapped.”

“Maria,” Natasha says, “that’s your origin story—the moment you chose to stand up for the little guy, for justice, when you chose to be a hero. Except, you did it all for a girl you liked.” And Natasha winks at her, which basically knocks the wind from her.

The next thing Maria is fully aware of is the waiter bringing them their food. She’s still distracted, but she notices Wanda had ordered the spaghetti too. Wanda couldn’t be so weird after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In Age of Ultron, it bugs me when Maria calls Wanda "weird," so I wanted Maria to feel some regret about that.


	5. Robot

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry it's been so long since I updated. I haven't forgotten about it, but I have been busy. I'm a PhD student and had to finish the semester. But here's the next chapter. Thanks for reading!

Maria is sitting at the desk in the living room of her apartment, wearing baggy, plaid pajama pants and a pull-over sweater. There’s a throw half strewn over the seat cushions, half on the floor beside her, and there’s a coat of dust on all her furniture. She has two laptops in front of her on the desk, which has stacks of paper of varying heights spread out on the rest of it. Work for Stark Industries. She’s waiting for Pepper to video call her to discuss some business—business to which Maria had to attend in person, so she had taken off in the early morning. On a day when she had had plans with Wanda.  
There’s a quick rapping on the apartment door, loud, sharp and leaving Maria with an elevated heart rate. A few seconds after the knocking stops—although Maria can still hear in intertwined with the thumping of her heart—her phone goes off. Pepper’s face pops up on the screen.

“Hello,” Maria says as she rests the phone against her ear. 

“Hey, Maria, how about opening your door, okay?”

Pepper had been knocking, Maria then realizes. There’s silence on the line as her brain makes the connection, jumbles up the connection. She stares at the red call ended symbol on her phone. Pepper knocks again, and Maria shuffles toward the door, unlocking and relocking it with a few confused finger swipes. She had once picked a lock under freezing water with one hand and her eyes squeezed shut after being flung unexpectedly from a ship. She could hack most computer systems, except Stark’s; she couldn’t hack the AI which pulsed through her home. Because she wasn’t Ultron. She pressed her palm on the wall beside the screen, leaning against it until her forehead touched the exterior of her hand.

Pepper is calling again, and she thinking she can hear her saying her name through the door.

“Would you like me to open the door, Ms. Hill?” The computer’s voice asked.

Maria sighs. “Yes,” she says without moving, “just open the damn door, please.”

“I do not understand your frustration, Ms. Hill. You could have just asked. I would have opened the door approximately five minutes and thirty-six seconds ago. I cannot read your mind.”

Maria glares up at the ceiling, her eyes darting about the room. The AI couldn’t read her mind. Stellar. That almost made up for the time AI hacked the whole internet, essentially reading the entire world’s mind all at once. Also, there was a human she knew who could read her mind. But who chose not to, although Maria had wished she had as she was leaving the compound so she didn’t wait for some depressingly long time for Maria to show up so they could watch a movie together. She imagined Wanda eventually tentatively asking the system to locate Maria.

“Are you okay, Maria?” Pepper is standing in front of the now shut door with her arms crossed, eyeing Maria. Her face is stern—the expression she usually saves for business meetings or anyone who says she only became CEO because she was sleeping with Tony, which Maria imagines is mainly said by guys jealous because they know their girlfriends would rather sleep with Iron Man. Regardless, Pepper apparently had gotten where she was because of her boyfriend, and she, and incidentally, Natasha, had gotten where they were because of their looks. Eye candy, Ward had said, and comments that struck socially conditioned insecurities even when said by Nazis stung. Never mind that Natasha had gotten where she was because as a child she had been kidnapped, abused and brainwashed into being that way. Sure, Natasha was gorgeous, but if Maria ever witnessed someone disrespecting her talent and pain, she’s hurt them. 

“Has my work not been--”

“I asked you if you were okay, Maria.” 

“You asked me last night, and I told you I am.”

Pepper has probably had some experience with discussions like this one, where things aren’t adding up, but the human part of the metaphorical equation refuses to speak, working and living with Tony for as long as she had. On the other hand, when Maria used her (most) stern voice, she didn’t want a response or an explanation. In fact, she demanded silence punctuated only a “yes, ma’am” and swift obedience. 

As Deputy Director, sometimes she had gotten a sarcastic “yes, sir.” Fury had told her to ignore it when he witnessed it, and she figured he had faced about as much racism as she had sexism, and that he had gotten where he did (and how he is) by ignoring it, but despite her demeanor, she didn’t have it together that well. She’s been under a steady drip of water that has been wearing pits into her skull, drowning her brain in puddles, and in the last seconds of consciousness before she runs out of oxygen, she saw Natasha—the look of concentrate and calculation when she fought, the way sometimes when she was thinking, she’d look down only meeting your gaze again with her own wide eyes when she had sorted her thoughts, her tilted grin.

“You rushed into my office a few days ago saying you had some things, urgent things you needed to discuss with me in person. Then when we schedule a meeting, you don’t show up. Tell me, Maria, how many meetings have you ever missed?”

“You sound like Natasha.” As she said that, Maria realizes it made no sense to someone who hadn’t been in her head and her figurative shoes recently, and the only one who had been in her head lately was Natasha. And if she said her name one more time, she’d be compromised. 

Pepper’s face scrunched. “Probably because she’s concerned about you too!”

“And what’s supposedly so wrong with me anyway?”

“Are you wearing a bra, Maria?

Maria crossed her arms over her chest in response. Frowning, she turns away from Pepper who hadn’t moved from the door and goes to sit on her sofa. She pushes her pillow lying on the cushion toward the armrest and puts her elbow on it. Pepper sits beside her and brings her hand to Maria’s arm. Maria looks to the fringed edge of the blue rug covering her hardwood floor, running her fingers her hair, tugging at a hand full of strands at the top of her head.

“I’ve only other seen you this distracted when you weren’t feeling well…”

Maria pulls away and turns so she is facing Pepper. “I do not get distracted when I’m sick. You know I have given two presentations back-to-back after being up all night—”

Pepper rolls her eyes. Maria thinks she’s thinking that you superhero types are all the same, but if she actually had said it Maria would respond that she’s not a superhero-type. She’s not anything. If anything, she’s exactly what they’re implying. Crazy. And she always had been.

“Why don’t you go out and say it directly? It’s maddening when you do it. It’s maddening when she does it. Just ask me if I’m going crazy! It’s really damn obvious that’s what you all mean. She’s beating around the bush, talking to me like I’m so fragile…” Maria knows she’s not a superhero like Natasha, that she’ll always be background noise compared to her...

A smile forms at the corner of Pepper’s mouth. “Is this about a girl?” She’s joking. Maria can tell as much from the glimmer in her eyes.

“You’re laughing. You’d lose respect for me if it was…”

“No! I’d-“

“You’d be happy? Because if it turned out I could have a crush, I’d be less of a robot?”

“Yes, Maria, it’s a well known fact that I hate people who are robots. Come on, think about you just said.”

Maria couldn’t suppress her laughter. It was about a girl, the girl of her dreams. Literally. Since that day they went to the mall, Maria had dreamt about Natasha every night and not just while she was sleeping. The night before she had left, after Natasha had gone to visit the Barton family, which Maria could only assume was because being the brilliant spy that she was, she could tell how Maria felt, she had rested her head on her arms folded over the book she was trying to read and daydreamed that Natasha was lying beside her, not beside her but with her—their arms and legs and minds intertwined. It hadn’t been as arousing as it had comforting. But she imagined Natasha and Clint laughing at their ex-boss’ crush.

As if in response to Maria’s thought, Pepper continued, “No one will judge you, Maria.”

Maria pulled her pillow to her chest and buried her head in it. At that point, she wondered if Pepper was talking about liking one girl or girls in general. She had lied; she did not want to address this directly.

“You’re right. I don’t feel well.” Maria leans back, groans and squeezes her eyes shut, opening them again to get a glimpse at the expression that accompanied Pepper’s pitying sigh. Her stomach did hurt, along with her brain, eyes and probably her entire body. Combat invigorated her; running away drained her, left her bruised and stunned, like she had been the target of a guerilla fighter. 

Pepper shakes her head. “I did mean psychologically. You were right before.”

Maria smiled at Pepper. During the year Maria had worked under Pepper, they had become good friends, often working late together. When they had begun having trouble keeping their eyes open, they’d abandon their work, open a bottle of wine and take their glasses to the window or the roof if they weather was warm enough, looking out at the city lights, sometimes watching them flicker off as the sun rose. But she couldn’t talk to her about Natasha, about how she had been waking up sweating, how when Natasha left for a few days, instead of feeling relief because she could walk through the compound without holding her breath in anticipation, she had had to leave herself because her anticipation would always lead to disappointment. 

“What’s going on, Maria?”

“Do you know how I knew? Knew I was gay, I mean.” Maria feels a prickling in her throat, dryness in her mouth, sees a woman in a well pressed blazer and shiny, straight hair with her hand on the arm of another woman who’s pressed into the corner of a sofa, probably hoping to disappear into it like pen caps and crumbs. 

Pepper shakes her head again and squeezes Maria’s hand. Which makes Maria not want to continue—this gesture that says thank you for trusting me, I am here for you.

“Before Fury recruited me for SHIELD, I was an officer in the Marines. There was a woman in my unit, about my age. Long story short, I was in love with her, and I hated myself for it. The only time I was ever distracted, off was when she was around, which was more often than not. And I wanted to impress her, and I’d slip up. Nothing noticeable. But I’d notice. I was foolish, barely anything more than a child. And it hurt so much. More than something like that ever should…”

“I’m so sorry, Maria.”

“For what? That I couldn’t stop myself from loving someone who could never love me?”

“That you were hurt.”

“After that, I couldn’t pretend otherwise anymore.” Nothing much had changed for Maria; it was just one more thing to ignore.

“Who knows?” Pepper asks and then quickly follows, “If you don’t mind saying, that is.”

“My aunt and her family, a couple of friends from before SHIELD. No one else—at least I’m assuming because of the number of times I’m told some offshoot of how a pretty girl like me should have no trouble finding a guy.

“That must be difficult.”

Maria nods. She knows she’s going to get hurt again. It’s the same feeling of being out of control, of building up to something in her mind that just couldn’t happen, so there was never any release. Excuse her for wanting to avoid the humiliation, the shame, for wanting to stay home in her pajamas and work a semi-normal job. Maria’s crying. She covers her face and can mop up the tears with her palm but can’t control the deep gasping that makes her whole body quiver. 

Pepper pulls Maria’s body against her. Maria rubs her nose on her sleeve so it doesn’t run on Pepper’s shirt but otherwise lets Pepper comfort her. She closes her eyes and tries to steady her breathing. “Please don’t tell anyone about this,” she says when she finally catches her breath.

“I think you should tell the person who is making you feel this way about this”

“I can’t. You have no idea how terrible an idea that is.” Maria wondered if she was explaining this well enough. She’d been called dyke so many times it was dizzying. And Pepper wanted her to openly admit it. 

“What’s the alternative? Continue to suffer like this?”

Maria was thinking more along the lines of quitting working with the Avengers completely and ignoring any news coverage of them in the future. She could take on a new identity—one where she had nothing to do with anything, where she certainly hadn’t made any morally ambiguous choices, where she wasn’t crushing on a colleague but just another fan loving the world’s heroes. She stands up and begins pacing back and forth in front of her sofa. Pepper’s eyes follow her. 

“I have work to do,” Maria says. She’s a solider, trained to march forward, fall into formation, get the job done.

“Maria, stop, you’re depressed.

Maria does stop, her pacing at least, and rubs her fingers into her forehead. She remembers Natasha’s parting words before taking off to see Clint: “take care of yourself while I’m not here to cheer you up.” Maria figured she had been teasing her again; she had winked when she said it after all. Which was more reason to run. Natasha had sent Maria dozens of messages over the last few days, apparently not discouraged when Maria ignored them all. “What can I do to help you?”

Maria sits back down, cradling her chin in her hands. “Is this your spiel as my boss?”

“Yes, it is. Happy workers are productive workers. Come on, Maria.”

“What do you want me to say?”

Later, Maria is drinking wine on an empty stomach. It’s warm because she lacked the patience to chill it, and it’s not making her tipsy as much as making her stomach hurt more. Pepper had left before she had popped open the wine; she wouldn’t have minded if Pepper had stayed, but she figured Pepper would have convinced her to trade the wine for soda. Because she was depressed, and this was an unhealthy response. She could ramble off a litany of examples. Maria takes another sip of the wine whose taste she finds both bitter and enjoyable. She pours more in the glass, the remainder of the bottle. It stings her tongue as she gulps it down. 

Natasha had teased that had they known each other as children, they would have been fierce rivals. As Maria was sleeping that night, after what by all accounts had been a fairly pleasant day spent with Natasha and Wanda, she dreamed she was a teenager again running in a track race. She was running as fast as she could, which in her real life had usually been enough to win, but a girl with glistening red hair trailed behind her, the rest of her profile blurred by the sun right over her shoulder is running circles around her. Maria saw the energy drain from her body, her knees finally giving out. She collapses and feels the track shaking below her as the other runner sprints by again. Except she stops and bends down beside Maria, who at that point had realized she had scraped her knees and was rubbing away the dirt in her wound. Maria can’t make out any details of the figure, the sun had cast a shadow over her entire body. Until Maria blinked, and it was Natasha, and she was her adult self again. Natasha sat next to her, silently putting her hand under Maria’s chin, running her thumb over Maria’s lips. Maria closes her eyes as Natasha brushes her lips against hers. She wakes up gripping her pillow, breathing heavily, the blanket kicked to her side.

She was curt around Natasha that day, unable to make eye contact, unable to not watch her lips, plump and a rich, dark shade of red. She wanted to put her hand around Natasha’s waist, take Natasha’s hand in her own...She wanted Natasha and every other cliché that came with it. That night she tried to stay awake, to reprogram her mind to dream about something else by falling asleep watching a movie. She’s lying on her side in bed, a pillow under her head as she watches the screen on the laptop sitting on her bedside table. Then she’s sparring with Natasha, considering letting Natasha hit her so she could feel her skin, albeit through a layer of clothing, on her own skin, let her pin her so…And Natasha does pin her. Maria watches the woman’s face outlined by the fluorescent lights above, her eyes which focus on her. Natasha loosens her muscles, shifts her weight so she could comfortably kiss Maria. Maria frees her hands from Natasha’s grip and goes to pull her Natasha’s t-shirt off. As she’s bringing it over her head, she rolls them over so she’s on top, holding herself up by her arms, hovering over Natasha’s bare skin. She nips at Natasha’s lip as she kisses her, only breaking away so Natasha could remove her shirt. 

That day, Natasha had asked if Maria wanted to spar. She said she was going to Clint’s house so she wanted to get some exercise in before she ate everything, or Maria had thought that’s what she said. She had no idea; she was so unable to focus. She either ran off or said she wasn’t feeling well or…Then Natasha left, and Maria left, and she wouldn’t let herself go to bed at night, which was fine because there was always work to do. She eventually fell asleep on her sofa, which is how she missed her meeting with Pepper.

Maria opens another bottle of wine, which she drinks until she’s so nauseous she can’t take another sip. She knew the wine would make her sick. She hadn’t eaten anything since she came to New York. In fact, she was drinking so she would get sick. The wine combined with stomach acid burned her throat coming up. It felt good. But Maria knew Pepper was right. She had repeated to Maria that she should talk to the woman she liked. Maria wasn’t going to tell Natasha how she felt, but she wasn’t going to avoid Natasha either. She’d ask her to lunch or something. 

Maria rinsed her mouth with water from the bathroom sink. She was still nauseous, but she went to her computer to order food, hopefully some pasta dish. Her phone was still on her desk where she had left it when she let in Pepper. Maria reads through the messages Natasha had sent her, finally considering her response.


	6. SHIELD, pt. 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A bit of an interlude before we next see Maria and Nat together, where Maria reflects upon what brought her to SHIELD and her past (heavy stuff like that). Part of my desire with this story is to explore the emotional lives of Maria and Natasha.

Maria had been 24 when Nick Fury had first approached her about becoming a SHIELD agent. Her unit had been stationed in Madripoor, sent to eliminate a local militia that was allegedly plotting terrorist activity. She had had orders to raid the compound their intelligence indicated served as their main base, but Maria had made a different call—one that saved countless lives and ultimately changed the course of her career and her life. And probably the world, when she thought about it and was willing to give herself some credit. She had predicted both life and work would change, or mostly she had predicted her military career would be cut short due to such insubordination, which at the time she recalled easily being able to justify to herself. She would get a job with a private corporation (which ironically did eventually happen) or maybe in the civilian government—whatever people with her skills did when they weren’t in the military, which she wasn’t quite sure of because she had never visited career services or spoke to an adviser outside of ROTC. Privatize global security apparently.

Fury had had an agent—Phil Coulson, who she down-the-line realized did that kind of recruiting often—trail her through the city at dusk. The air had been a hazy swirl of red and orange, hot without feeling hot, but sweat pricked through her pores, dripping between her skin and her tight layer of underclothes. She felt their eyes on her, could hear their breathing and footsteps in her mind despite the distance as she quickened her pace and fingered one of the guns at her side. But somehow Phil then appeared in front of her. He never let her forget that moment, the one time he managed to outwit her, which contributed to her vivid recollection.

“I know you can let your guard down, Hill, I’ve seen it. Remember the time you were sauntering through Madripoor,” Phil would say and give her a smirk. She insisted she hadn’t been sauntering. But maybe she had been. And maybe if she hadn’t been, she should have because a stranger was about to offer her a job as a secret agent with a secret organization, and she had unraveled a plot her higher-ups hadn’t and saved lives.

Phil had introduced himself as an agent of SHIELD, told her his boss was very interested in meeting her and gave her a location to meet them in the middle of the night. His exact words she couldn’t recall, but she knew he had known her full name—Maria Hill. The words had stung, like a reminder that she had failed, that the enemy had follow her and trapped her. She had shivered in the now slightly chillier desert air, cold from the wetness of her closest layer of clothing. Phil eyed her, presumably waiting for a response. Her response was an elbow to the neck, an attempt to disarm him until she realized he didn’t have any weapon drawn and he wasn’t fighting back. Had he had used that as a ploy to catch her off guard, it would have worked. She remembered staggering, feeling like her was flailing aimlessly, throwing a tantrum.

Phil had just smiled at her. His smile she soon learned sometimes did count as a drawn weapon, but at that moment, he repeated “My boss wants to meet you, Maria. We very much hope to see you later.” As he turned to leave, he tossed something to Maria, which she caught without looking at it for longer than the second he flicked it. Only after he said “I put the location in your phone in case you forget” did it register that he had returned to her the flip phone she carried in her bag. She thought he had winked at her before he disappeared into the now darker but still crowded market. Maria had remained alone in the narrow alley, which one minute was dimly lit by the glow from an upstairs apartment and the next pitch black as a bed sheet blew in the wind. She had wanted to collapse to her knees, to bang her gloved hands on the dusty street. That day she had defied orders, sent out her unit on her own unapproved plan to disarm bombs in locations throughout the city her reasoning told her the organization would target, faced her superiors who at that point had deduced she had been right but had to take their frustration out on the very person who saved them from the consequences of their mistake. Maria had wanted to cry in that alleyway without taking off her helmet or the scarf she that covered the lower half of her face. But instead she slipped through the city back toward their base, eyes scanning around her, remembering the day she signed on ROTC as a freshman in college. Because her mom had been a nurse in the army, which is where she had met Maria’s father, because her aunt had told her that her mother cared about saving lives, and that she would have been happy to have ultimately given her life to save Maria’s.

Standing in that alley, Maria had seen herself from above—fully clad in her uniform but small, weighed down—for the first time since her father had gripped the collar of the baggy navy blue sweatshirt with bleach stains that she had been wearing that fall as a coat and shoved her through the door of his apartment onto the chipped, greyed linoleum in the hallway. That night her father kicked her out of his home because the principle had kicked her out of his school, she had wandered from the narrow, congested city streets to the quieter suburban streets where her aunt lived.

Some of the street lights she had passed worked, others didn’t; a steady stream of headlights passed her on some streets, others were still beside her shoes on the sidewalk. She had tried to hold her breath from the moment one car passed her until the next time she saw headlights. She had started counting when she left the area lit by one working lamp. If she ended on an even number when she reached the light of another working light, she would turn left at the next intersection, trusting it would get her to her aunt’s house eventually. Her knuckles had been raw from fighting, her arms were sore because the guard who had restrained her as he dragged her from the classroom had used enough force to hold someone twice her strength and size, but it was an early November evening, and she was tired because she had never made it to the class period through which she usually napped. She had kept walking. That evening in Madripoor she had kept walking to their makeshift base, focusing on the reliable thud of her boot on the ground, counting her footsteps to block out her anxieties. She had been going back to the base, going to perform her evening routine before she would slip away in the night.

Fury had fixed his eye on her, never swaying, shifting his weight or adjusting his grip on his own forearms. She had thought he had lured her there to demand ransom from the military, which would have gotten her in trouble no doubt, because she had chosen to go. She had chosen to go. Maybe it had been for no reason other than boredom. Maybe she had known she wanted more; although she also should have known that that more would lead her to a world that defied her training. Maria had never given much thought to fate, especially then before she met the Avengers, but a conversation she had witnessed between Clint, Steve and Natasha did come to mind. They’d been talking about destiny, and Clint was insisting to a humble Steve that he was always going to be Captain America, even before he had the received the serum.

“…because you are virtuous, honorable,” Clint had said, “because of the world you grew up in where so many others witnessed poverty and violence and chose to be hateful.”  
Steve had brushed it off. “I was persistent. When you’re persistent enough, you’re bound to be in the right place at the right time.”

“I was persistent too then—in not wanting to end up alone. Led me to be a thief.”

“But you’re not a thief, Clint,” Natasha had pointed out, “not anymore anyway.”

“No…I suppose the last thing I stole—not counting things in the line of duty as an Agent of SHIELD or as an Avenger—was you.”

“I ultimately came willingly.”

“Because you chose to do good! You have persistently chosen to help people.” Steve interjected.

“To atone.”

“But it is still a choice! We choose to be good.” 

Later the battle against the Hydra agents within SHIELD would support Steve’s point. 

Maria had stayed quiet during that conversation, feeling as if it didn’t apply to her, as if she did not have the personal expertise to have an opinion. She couldn’t have said that she was always going to be the deputy director or that she had even chosen it per say. It just was—until it wasn’t. Yet her life hadn’t been without its own foreshadowing. Or events that in retrospect she picked out as foreshadowing anyway. Once she had overheard a conversation between her aunt and a teacher. The memory made her want to shriek to suppress it. It was embarrassing in its simplicity.

Maria had gotten into another fight. Her aunt had convinced her local school district to accept Maria, and she had gone on to get all A’s in advanced classes and become the best by a long shot on the school’s track and field team—a past which she figured Natasha would believe much more readily than what she had told her weeks ago. But she had witnessed another bully, who had said something homophobic and shoved another student, kicking him trying to make him admit to being gay, and Maria had to intervene. It was a reaction as instinct as pulling her hand from a hot surface. She had told him to stop. He shoved her instead, and that was the first time someone had spat the word dyke at her. She remembers how the tile with its thin layer of caked on dirt had felt rough against her skin when he pushed her down. Then she had sprung from the ground, uttering for the time a phrase she went on to say often. How dare you.

Her aunt had come to pick her up from an afterschool detention that went well into the early evening. She was coming back to the room after going to put her finished homework in her lock so she wouldn’t have to needlessly lug any books home, and the monitor who knew Maria from an English course the prior year was talking to her aunt.

“It’s an admirable trait—willingness to jump in to protect someone you don’t know just because they’re in trouble, that is. Maybe she could use a bit more discipline, but it’ll take her places one day.”

“Yes,” her aunt had said. “That is exactly what worries me.” And those words about summed up the elephant in the corner of her otherwise close relationship with her aunt to this day.

Maria was always going to be involved with SHIELD. When Phil had walked away from her that night, she had wanted to chase after him, grab his hand, beg him to tell her how he had gotten her phone. Like a child.

“We’ve been watching you for a while, Hill, and I must say we are a fan of your work.”

“Uh, thank you.” Maria was sitting with her back perfectly straight and her hands folded in front of her, looking up at Fury.

“We could use that work around here. I’ll be direct: I’d like for you to become an agent of the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.”

“Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division?” Maria had known of the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division since she couldn’t have made it that far in her career without at least hearing about it, but she had never given heed to the stories. She didn’t care for the supernatural or conspiracy theories. Soldiers and strategy were all she needed. And that was before aliens and superheroes had entered the picture.

Fury didn’t respond, believing there was such a thing as a stupid question—one of a few attitudes she picked up from him in their time working closely together. Maria had wanted to shift in her chair, to fidget, but she had sat still, staring back at him only moving her to blink out of necessity. She could do that all night. In fact, she would have to do that all night because after a few minutes of the standoff, she simply could not say a word.

Maria later learned that Fury intended to make her sit still and silent all night. He let Maria ask him a question of her choosing every year as a birthday gift, and years later, she asked him about that night.  
“I wanted to see how much discipline you had,” he had replied. 

“And I passed?” she had asked almost rhetorically. 

He had almost grinned at her. “You impressed me.”

“I could have been sleeping with my eyes open.”

“You wouldn’t have. You knew I could tell the difference in your breathing.”

At what Fury had somehow known to be dawn that day, he finally broke the silence. “Go back to your base now, Hill, before they start to miss you. Although, I’m sure they will miss you in the days to come…”

“I can’t just leave the military! I have an obligation to serve for a set period at least, in a specific capacity because of—”

“Don’t worry about your prior responsibilities. We will take care of them for you.”

Maria could have walked away then. She could have walked away from SHIELD at any point—from Fury’s attempts to weaponize technology, to bring the dead Coulson back to life, to finding out she’d been working for Hydra all along. But she stayed, and she came back, even when there was technically no SHIELD to come back to, when she could have had a safer, less chaotic life.

Just last week, she had returned to the Avengers compound from her apartment in New York.


	7. Colon Close-Parentheses

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And I'm back with some actual Maria and Natasha cuteness : )

Maria slows her pace when she sees Natasha waiting for her in the lounge off the kitchen, her legs crossed and her long coat folded in her lap.   
“I’ll meet you for lunch,” the text pertaining to that afternoon had read. Maria had read it a few dozen times so she would have known if the occasion required a coat.

Natasha had updated Maria with captioned photos detailing her day while she had been away visiting Clint, like an Instragram account, except, Maria hoped, for her alone. She had ended about half the messages with colon close-parentheses, which made Maria think, true to Nat’s parting words, that about half the time, Natasha had hoped to put a smile on her face—even if she figured Maria wouldn’t leave bed and was burrowed under her covers, the messages her small glimpse at the world outside her mind. And Maria had read the messages while her blankets completely covered her, like a child might read by flashlight after bedtime.

Maria had read but didn’t response to the texts Natasha sent the first days she was away, but when she finally found the guts, or had realized thanks to Pepper that she had hit rock bottom, she picked one particular one to answer. It had a picture of a pie made with apples the family and Natasha had picked earlier that day, and Natasha had captioned it “see why I wanted to spar,” punctuated not with a question mark but a semi-colon and close-parentheses. A minute later, she continued “Just kidding, I run two hours in the morning and evening. Except for the day I couldn’t because the kids sprinted after me, and I had to come back and play with them…” This time, a period—meant simply as a statement of fact, setting the record straight. Maria felt the agony the Black Widow was capable of inflicting.  
Maria had laid on her side, face smooshed against the sheet, eyes closed and feeling the warmth from her breath filling the small, enclosed space around her. She’d had a boyfriend in high school, a relation that checked off a box on the to-do list of her striving for perfection, a transaction where he would get to hold hands with a girl who had (what he thought were) gorgeous eyes, and she got security that no one would she the reality behind those eyes. The experience had deprived her of feeling this way then.

“Looks yummy,” Maria had texted back, “and yeah, I run too when I’m visiting family and can’t do my usual training.

P.s. We should grab lunch once you’re back.”

Natasha had responded with a colon and close-parentheses, which stopped the conversation on Maria’s end because she couldn’t tell if Natasha was agreeing to lunch or playing along with no intention of following through. Never mind that they’re eaten together many times back on days when they both happened to be at headquarters or even both in the city. Natasha would call her, or she’d call Natasha, and they’d meet. Natasha probably didn’t give her current text a second thought—or any thought at all, just the colon and close-parentheses.

Later after silence on Maria’s end—Maria refused to play into the potential for Natasha to continue humoring her—Natasha text back “That was a ‘yes,’ Maria.” Then Maria had finally flung off the blanket covering her face, needing the fresh, cool air to breathe and shifting her unfocused gaze to the grey ceiling. 

Thus, Maria stands a few feet from the sofa on which Natasha waits for her.

“Maria!” Natasha rises and goes to hug her, who might have preferred a handshake but touches her hands to Natasha’s back to stop them from dangling.

“Hi, Natasha,” Maria says, thinking she deserved a pat on the back for not greeting her “Good afternoon, Agent Romanoff.”

“I hope you’ve been well or well enough anyway.” Natasha lets her hands slide down Maria’s arms as she steps away from the hug, and Maria wants to stomp her feet or scream—something to channel these emotions. But Maria had literally been conditioned to withstand torture, to steel her face and every other muscle to never reveal pain or any other reaction that would give away classified information.

“Well enough.” The enough would have to stand in for Dr. Pepper diagnosing her with depression and deciding to set an alarm so the tinny, yet upbeat melody would remind her to eat at regular intervals throughout the day and go to bed and get up at a specific set time. She didn’t know how else to address her mental state.

“I thought we’d go outside to eat. I made— ”

“Because the fresh air will do me good?” When Natasha frowns, Maria’s eyes dart to the side before she brings her hands to cover her mouth.

“Outside does us all good. Or at least that’s what they said in the Red Room. Before they dumped us in the frozen woods with only the supplies for one of us to survive. And Russian winters are not as pleasant as fall in New York.” Natasha’s face returned to a neutral gaze, not frowning at the thing she should have been.

“Colon open-parentheses,” Maria says. And she wouldn’t have blamed Natasha if she brought her hand to her forehead, concerned Maria might have a fever. Natasha gives her a tight grin, almost pinching her lips, and raises her eyebrows. She then winks at Maria.

“I made sandwiches. We can go for a walk and find a spot to eat.” Natasha’s hand is resting now on Maria’s shoulder directing her toward the kitchen.

“I’ll have to get a sweater.” Maria backs away, breathing when she’s out of sight, thankful she had worn the grey t-shirt and camo pants so she had an excuse to gather her composure. After she had mustered up the care and energy to wash her hair again, Maria’s fingers had rediscovered how to pull her hair into a bun—not a tight bun, strands escape the band here and there. She messes it further as she pulls on a sweater she had hanging over her chair.

The seasons had just changed so only the tips of some leaves showed any red. The sky was clear, albeit a lighter shade of blue than on summer days, and the sun was high, but the air felt chilly. Maria and Natasha walk along a trail through the long grass that ran parallel to the beginning of the forest. Natasha’s walking with her hands in her pocket, closing her eyes a bit longer than necessary as she blinks. Maria’s counting one as she inhales, one as she exhales like she’d once been taught to do by therapist to re-center herself in the present.

They find a place to lay the fleece blanket Natasha had packed where the blades of grass became sparser and brown needles filled the gaps between them. The needs sink as Maria sat but don’t poke her through the blanket. As Maria is poking at the ground through the fleece, Natasha is rifling through the basket for the food. Maria wondered if Natasha often went on picnics.

“Did you have a good time with Clint?” Maria takes the sandwich Natasha hands her and begins to unroll the napkin in which Natasha had packed it.

“Wonderful.” Natasha is sitting with her legs crossed, a napkin unfolded in her lap. She’d eyeing Maria, holding her own sandwich without unwrapping it.

Maria laughs, a deep, uncontrollable laughter that cramps her chest and leaves her wanting for air. “Did you…make…” Maria coughs. “…make…spaghetti sandwiches?” She’s holding a long piece of crispy crusted bread stuffed with spaghetti, vegetable sauce and sliced meatballs.

Natasha nods. “Is that not something Americans do?”

Maria punches Natasha, who giggling as well, in the shoulder.

“It’s baked spaghetti, inside Italian bread. Thought about using garlic bread but we can try that when we’re not going on a picnic.” Natasha takes a bite. “Mhmmm….” She swallows and smiles, shrugging at Maria.

Maria slowly takes a bite, not concerned about the taste—it’s Natasha after all—but generally confused. The sandwich is crispy and chewy, then juicy when she reaches the spaghetti. Natasha had made a good call, albeit a call filled with carbs. She just stares at Natasha.

“Oh!” Natasha’s still chewing. “I have kettle chips as well.” She pulls open the bag and pours some chips on a napkin between them. After remaining still a few more minutes, she takes a chip and munches on it.

“Is spaghetti the only favorite food of mine that you know?”

“I’m a spy, Maria. I know what everyone eats.”

“Is that so?” 

“You know it is.”

“What’s yours then?”

“My favorite food? Never had one. Food is for survival, no point in caring too much.” Except, Maria knows, Natasha obviously did.

They finish eating in silence.

“You ever wish you could run away from this all?”

Maria gulps down the water she had been sipping. Yes, she had been pondering her continued presence quite recently. “I guess, in passing maybe, nothing serious. Why? Where’s this coming from? Do you?”

“Oh. No.” Natasha sighs, looking away from Maria. “Visiting Clint’s family, as much as I love them, just gets me thinking…”

Maria nods, putting her water bottle down and giving Natasha her full focus, listening.

“You know, after Clint got off the line with you…the day Wanda…Ultron…got in all our minds, Clint took us there. That was the first time the rest of the team met them… No, never mind that. I’m being silly…”

Maria keeps watching Natasha. “…If it’s on your mind, I’m sure it isn’t silly. It must—”

“You don’t even know what I’m talking about!”

Maria shrugs. “Does it matter?”

“No. No, I suppose not. I thought about running away then, from my life as a so-called Avenger, not for the first time but I think I may have meant it then.”

“You didn’t though, Nat.” She wanted to add thank you for not running, for coming back and finding me. Even if it will inevitably end in pain. I will take this time together even knowing that.

“Nope! And it was for the best. Hearts weren’t in it. Anyway, Steve, brilliant captain that he is, couldn’t train the new Avengers himself. That’d have been selfish on my part.”

“Training…so that’s what’s supposed to be happening here. I was wondering about that. I just see a lot of playing around.”

“Hah hah, you’re incriminated in the goofing off too then since I seem to recall you spending time with us.”

“Hey, I spent all last week going over hundreds of updated reports on all the organizations Stark Industries monitors.”

“Doesn’t count. Only work for the Avengers counts.”

“I think it does count… We’re catching problems before they reach us here.”

Natasha stretches her arms in front of her. “I didn’t say it was a bad thing. We’re human. It’s nice…” She brushes some crumbs from her blanket. Her voice had gotten quieter as that sentence had progressed, but Maria heard. She rubs Natasha’s shoulder, and Natasha tilts her head so it touches Maria’s hand.

“Things are just starting to get good around here.” 

Maria chews at her lip, but she sees the light return to Natasha’s gaze. She personally wasn’t sure if she’d say it was a great time for the Avengers—not outside their bubble here at least.

“You look skeptical. I just mean Clint has his family there. But don’t we kind of have the same thing here?”

Maria knew that “we” included Sam, Rhodey, Steve, Wanda and Vision, but she could dream that it didn’t. Or not that it didn’t at all, but that it especially meant her.

“Of course.” Maria knows she had taken longer than necessary to respond.

“What are you thinking, Maria? Wondering what’s gotten into me?”

Maria is thinking that she wanted to hold Natasha’s hand, hold Natasha. To tell Natasha that she understood what had gotten into her. That she knew Natasha was trying. And her heart ached because all she could do was watch.

“…That there’s often a disconnect between what we want or mean and what we get.” That may have been the most perceptive thing Maria ever said. A philosophy class had been the one course that ruined her streak of all A’s.

Natasha shakes her head.

“I mean with Ultron…and SHIELD!”

“Sure. I hear you.”

At some point as she had been stumbling for words, Maria had moved the open palm she’d been leaning on so it rested on Natasha’s hand.

“I think about SHIELD a lot. Or I did. Maybe it’s the Avengers now.” Natasha sits up and hugs her legs to her stomach, in the process pulling her hand out from under Maria’s.

“I know, Nat. I do too.”

“Or maybe we’re not…I mean, I’m not thinking about SHIELD or the Avengers as much as I’m thinking about me.”

“I know I am. Thinking about me, that is. Not you.” More strands of hair had fallen from Maria’s bun, but she didn’t brush them from her face.

“You’re cute, Maria. You’re not really such a stringent person after all, are you?”

Maria chuckles as she sits up as well. “I’m afraid I might be. Stringent. Not cute.” Maria looks up at the sky, realizing part of the heaviness had lifted. “There’s people who make me want to not take that attitude home from work with me.”

“That’s got to be it then. For me too.”

Maria lets those words hang in the silence between them. She breaths in the fresh, late afternoon air as a slight breeze rustles her hair. Now she brushes it behind her ear.

Natasha’s shoulder is touching Maria’s, enough so that Maria can rest her head on it. Natasha exhales, leaning her own head against Maria’s.

“Maria?” Natasha asks after they had been sitting like that for long enough for Maria to start to feel it in her neck muscles.

“Yeah?”

“…Nothing.”

“Nat?”

“Hm?”

Maria doesn’t respond.

“Maria, it’s a smiley face, not a colon and a close-parentheses.”

Maria shakes with laughter, as Natasha wedges herself against Maria’s chest. Maria wraps her arms around Natasha, resting her chin on Natasha once she shifts so she can comfortably hug Natasha.

“Thank you, Maria,” Natasha whispers into the fabric of Maria’s sweater.


	8. Habits

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot happens here. Hope you enjoy it : )

Maria relaxes against the sofa, slouching as Natasha snuggles into her side, her knees pulled to her chest so she resembles a ball, rubbing at Natasha’s back. She feels the prominence of Natasha’s spine through her sleeveless shirt, the firmness of her muscles on her otherwise small frame. They had switched off the lights in a common room, the same room where Natasha had approached Maria weeks prior, while watching a television show, but they’d long lost focus so Maria had turned off the television, leaving them together on the sofa in the darkness. The time had to be approaching 2am, presumably the only reason they could display such affection publicly.

Since the afternoon on which they had had that picnic when Natasha had first cuddled against Maria, Maria had come to find herself often in a similar arrangement. They never spoke of it, during, before or after, not as they had walked home in the darkness that had fallen while they had laid on the blanket. Natasha had come to Maria’s room at night while Maria was propped against her pillows reading on the tablet she kept for personal use, mainly for books, video streaming and a few mobile games she (more than) occasionally checked—all puzzle or slice of life games. She had enough world-saving and adventure in her real life. At work, Pepper and she had played against each other from their respective offices, but they’d never admit they enjoyed the seconds they unwound when they worked an average of half the hours in a day. Although when Coulson or Fury had needed Maria, she might have cut back to 10 hours, or worked more than 12 hours straight, losing herself in data in a way that was like disassociating.

When Natasha had entered her room, Maria had pulled back her blanket to let Natasha sit beside her, which Natasha had, shifting until she got comfortable but keeping up the hood of her sweater and her hands in the sleeves. Maria had lifted her arms as well, allowing Natasha to lay where they had been on Maria’s lap, bring them back down around Natasha. Once Natasha had settled, Maria returned to reading, only looking away from the words on the screen to check if Natasha was reading along, but while she hadn’t closed her eyes, she seemed focused on the fabric of Maria’s t-shirt. Had Natasha taken an interest in her book, Maria would have switched to a mystery novel, which she kept but never read unless she knew someone else would inquire or see what she was reading. Despite (secretly) collecting books since she had learned to read, later than normal because her father had never registered her for school until the authorities threatened him, Maria read digitally so no one could see what she was reading or what it was about; that and she had grown to hate clutter and often moved so it made the most sense to keep her non-work interests hand-held, Maria reasoned.

That night with Natasha she had been continuing her read through of a collection of digitally reprinted lesbian pulp fiction. Ironically, in the story, one woman had snuck off in the night to join another woman in her bed. They had gotten together as the story progress, sort of and not happily ever after like a straight couple might have. It had been the mid 20th century. Maria didn’t know history that well but knew until recently, things wouldn’t have gone so well for her in her line of work if the wrong person found out. She never knew if SHIELD had had an official policy, but she found some twisted amusement in thinking in retrospect anyway, that given the continued presence of Nazis, acceptance might not have been a strong suite. Although, she figured Fury must know—would he really have allowed her to be his second-in-command if he didn’t know her sexual history—but literally couldn’t have cared less.

As Natasha is curled up against Maria, she’s again wearing her hood up. Her steady breathing indicated she had fallen asleep, which gave Maria the chance to lightly touch her hand to Natasha’s face. She’d been worried Natasha had come down with something, refused to admit it but still wanted comfort from a friend when she wasn’t feeling well. But Natasha’s skin didn’t feel clammy, and arlier her eyes had appeared clear, and they had eaten chocolate chip pancakes and laughed at the television. When Maria had passed by where they trained, Natasha had basically been dodging bullets. Anyway, Maria wondered if at this point Natasha would even bother to conceal not feeling well. The guys might be too hard-headed to notice, but Natasha wasn’t exactly as guarded as she once had been. Natasha had joked that Maria was wondering what had gotten into her, but yes, yes, she was wondering just that, about Natasha’s sudden desire for closeness.

As much as Maria would have welcomed it, they couldn’t sleep in the lounge. When Natasha came to Maria’s room at night, Maria was never quite certain if she spent the night. When she pulled at the chain cord to turn off her lamp, Natasha had been there, but she wasn’t when Maria woke up in the morning. Uncharacteristically for her, Maria had been sleeping through the night without waking. In the light of day, someone would see them in the lounge though, and they’d ask questions (unless they were in on whatever joke this was), and Natasha would stop coming to her.

Maria hated waking up Natasha since she figured Natasha didn’t have any easier of a time falling asleep than she did, but she doubted she could carry Natasha back to her room, not without waking her anyway.

“Nat,” she whispered, breaking their unspoken agreement to not speak during these times. Maria wished she could awaken Natasha with a kiss or run her hand along Natasha’s skin until she twitched at the sensation, her eyes popping open with a groan. But at that point, Maria refrained from even initiating this time they spent together. She wasn’t going to play into the stereotype that because she was a lesbian, she lusted after the women with which she worked. Especially because it had been true for her more than once.

“Natasha.” Maria spoke louder this time. “Wake up. It’s almost time for Steve and Sam’s morning run.”

“My morning run too then…” Natasha muttered into Maria, making her struggle to hear. Natasha sat up and rubbed her eyes. “Why are you still awake, Maria?”

Maria yawns at the question. She’d broken her streak of at least getting into bed at the same time every night (falling asleep was still iffy), but she had also been eating without the clock reminding her so maybe she could overlook it.

“How could I when you were on top of me?” Maria could have, would have if they were in her bedroom.

“My bad.” Natasha lays down again so that her back is on Maria’s knees. “Better?” Maria stares at Natasha’s smile, which Maria figured would fade as Natasha saw her own stiff face. But Natasha just closed her eyes, yanking the hood so it covered as much of her face as possible and folded her arms on her chest.

“What’s with the hood?” Maria pulls at its tip. “We’re indoors.”

“It’s comfy. You should try it. Your shirt is so rough.”

Natasha had changed into yoga pants and the hooded sweater after her post-training shower, but Maria still wore her regular clothes, which that day had meant black denim pants and a shirt made from the durable but rough material used in her old uniforms. Maria never consciously left her own space without being dressed in such a way, not wanting anyone to see her wearing even sweatpants, which she had succeeded at until recently when both Pepper and Natasha had seen her in her pajamas.

“Do you sleep in your uniform?”

“You know I don’t. Not anymore anyway.”

Natasha sits up again. “Actually, I wear the hood out of habit—to disguise myself as best I can. So I have a bunch that are soft on the inside and tell myself that’s why.” She flips the sleeve inside out to show Maria its lining. Maria doesn’t move.

“You’re right! It’s almost time for my morning run. Wanna join me?” Natasha cuts off Maria’s silence.

Maria hadn’t been running in the morning. Once she broke the habit, she had trouble willing herself out of bed. After waking up, she often laid there, working up the energy to get up.

“Sure.” Natasha didn’t need to know how depression had crept into Maria’s routine, disrupting her well-trodden ruts so that she no longer knew she way through her own life.

“The exercise will do you good.” Natasha winks at Maria with a tilted grin.

“Can I get some sleep first though?”

“I should say no. I really should…”

Maria smiled. “Good night, Nat. I need to sleep. Now isn’t a great time for to be pushing myself like that when I don’t have to.” If Natasha could ease up on concealing how she felt, maybe she could as well. And just hope that Natasha’s attempts at helping didn’t go any further.

***

Natasha’s hair floats behind her as she runs, like it had in Maria’s dream. As far as Maria could tell, Natasha never tied her hair back or wore it up. She’s just able to punch, kick, shoot, jump, run, read, i.e. any activity she might encounter on any given day with it falling freely on her shoulders. In fact, it appeared to Maria that Natasha was growing out her hair. Maria had never been one to tolerate her wearing her hair down. She kept it long because she always had but only pulled it from her bun to brush it so it doesn’t tangle and occasionally when she dresses up.

Maria runs a few strides behind Natasha, watching her, knowing when to round the bend in the course from the movement of Natasha’s muscles. They’d traded the idea of an impromptu morning run for an evening one. Natasha had sent her a text right after they both went to their room saying “You rest, Mar. We’ll reconvene later : )” so Maria had slept some before going about her day. And they were running indoors instead of around the countryside. It’s easier on the lungs than the fall air, Natasha had claimed.

“I grew up in Chicago. I practiced for track outside during all the seasons. And I’ve lived in DC and NY since then—doing guess what, running outside—and last I checked, they get cold temperatures there too.”

Natasha had pressed a finger to Maria’s lips. “Ssshhh, I know you think that’s the same as Russia, but it’s not.” Natasha then reaches her hands over her head, stretching her core. “Anyway, you shouldn’t have been running on the ice. You could have slipped.”

“I could slip and trip you in any weather…”

“Chill out, Maria. No pun intended. It’s storming. Don’t you get weather updates on your phone?” Still with her arms arched over her head, Natasha stretches to her left side. Maria pokes at Natasha’s stomach, then tickles her with her fingertips. Natasha’s knee jerks upward to try to push away Maria’s hand.

“You’re ticklish!” Natasha had only herself to blame for the tickling. She had left her stomach exposed like a trusting cat.

“I’m not anything-ish. You just are touching me unexpectedly in a sensitive spot. Anyone…would…” Natasha continues to twitch and squirm at Maria’s touch. Maria feels her face burn, thinking maybe the cold air and rain might have been better for exercise than this stuffy (not stuffy at all, Stark wouldn’t build anything without extraordinary air flow) gym after all. A stray lightning strike couldn’t hurt that much.

Natasha stops squirming abruptly, surprising Maria so she stops, and her hand hovers over the thin fabric covering Natasha’s stomach.

“Hey!” Natasha swats at Maria’s hand. “Don’t stop, that actually felt good…”

“I’m going to run now, Natasha…”

As Maria turns to take off running, Natasha pulls at the back of her t-shirt. “Really, I thought that was enough of a work-out for now.” Natasha plops onto the rubbery track surface so she’s sitting with her legs fanned out.

“You’re way more flexible than I am.” Maria expects Natasha to spring up beside her or take off running from her seated position and sprint around the track before Maria could process what had happened. But she stays still on the ground. Maria stands above her silently, having lost the tempo of their banter.

Natasha reaches for Maria. “Come on, there are supervillains out there training twice as hard as us.” At Maria’s smirk, Natasha shrugs. “Steve’s words, not mine. Apparently, my serious face is equally as good a motivator as the threat of evil to all of mankind.”

“You have a serious face?” Maria grips Natasha’s outstretched hand and pulls her to her feet. She’s felt Natasha’s hand before—a squeeze of reassurance, once sarcastically because Maria refused to cross the street when the walk sign wasn’t on.

“I’ll hold your hand if you’re scared.” Natasha had said.

“I’m not scared. It’s just illegal. How would it look if two of SHIELD’s best agents got arrested for jaywalking?”

Natasha had just pulled Maria by her fingers then to force her to cross the street. Now Natasha had slipped her fingers between Maria’s and was rubbing Maria’s knuckles. Until she did start running, still holding Maria’s hand, only pulling away when it became clear Maria hadn’t been ready to keep up with her pace.

Maria didn’t want to catch Natasha, to match her pace.

***

Later, after they’d finished running, Natasha is refilling her water bottle. Maria is standing behind her waiting for her turn, sipping at the last bit of warm water in her bottle. Her breath fogs up the clear plastic. Natasha steps aside so Maria can get water.

“Hey, Nat?” Maria watches the water level in the bottle rise.

“Hm?” Natasha gulps down her mouthful of water.

“Do you remember the time you made me cross the street when the ‘don’t walk’ sign was on?”

Natasha thinks for a moment, swirling her now mostly empty bottle. “Why are you asking?”

“You’ve been messing with me for a while now…” More like the touch of your hand brought the memory rushing back to her, but that wasn’t a lie either.

Natasha gets more water but looks at Maria over her shoulder.

Maria wanted to ask Natasha if she was messing with her now.

“If I recall correctly, a truck almost plowed us down.”

“It was a moped…and we would have done would damage to it than it would have to us had it hit us.”

“Yeah, maybe, but that’s no fun.” Natasha is still facing Maria so the bottle overflows, spilling cold water on Natasha’s hand.

Maria tried to smile. But she had made that moment when she at least was tired and sweaty, when Natasha probably just wanted water, awkward.

“Actually, Maria, that time it wasn’t just me teasing you. Fury had bet me I couldn’t get you to break any rules. I started small.”

Maria shivers; she probably drank too much cold water too quickly, was cooled down enough from running that her wet clothes bothered her.

“Aren’t you going to ask if I ever went bigger?”

Maria doesn’t answer.

“You’ll have to guess…”

“Is that all I am?

“A guesser? In a way, you are. Isn’t that what all spy work is, if you really think about it?”

“Natasha, you know what I mean.”

Natasha shakes her head. The amusement had disappeared from her face, and she had one hand on her hip.

“Am I just a joke to you guys?” Natasha’s words had jabbed at her, stopped any train of thought where Maria felt in anyway good about what she did or important right in its tracks.

“You’re serious?” Natasha must have seen Maria blink back tears.

“And you’re not! Ever.”

“Maria, I’ve never…”

“Never what? Lied to me?”

“I can’t say that. That’s preposterous. And beside the point. Where is this coming from?”

Maria doesn’t answer, unsure herself. But she knew it wasn’t beside the point. Natasha tries to put her hand on Maria’s shoulder, but Maria doesn’t let her. “I hate you,” Maria finally mumbles. She meant that she liked Natasha far, far too much to be around her, especially when she did things like hold her hand and talk to her.

“You don’t hate me. You’re just—”

“I’m just tired, right. I’m cranky because I’m tired? You do realize that is exactly what an adult would say to a small child?”

“For one, you know I don’t know how to talk to children. Two, I don’t know what we’re talking about right now either. You might not know that.”

Maria realized tears had formed in her eyes. When she squeezes them shut and wipes them with both her hands, Natasha pulls her into a one-handed hug. She had thought she was doing better; she had been eating and sleeping on a regular schedule. But apparently better wasn’t possible.

“I’m sweaty.”

“You’re also teary.”

“I’m fine.”

“I’m trained to spot and react to anything out of the ordinary no matter how minute, and this is about the opposite of minute.”

Maria wished Natasha would stop bringing up her training, stop reminding her that everything she was doing was merely force of habit.

“Let me go. I want to go shower.” Maria wanted Natasha to hold her, the way she’d been holding Natasha, but she couldn’t allow it.

Natasha lets her go. “Good idea. Take a hot shower. You’ll feel better.”

Maria wanted to repeat that she was fine, that she didn’t need anything, but her mind felt a bit less foggy now. She’d melted down enough,

“Maria?” Natasha asks as Maria’s walking away. Maria stops but doesn’t turn around. “No one thinks you’re a joke. Quite the opposite. We all love you… I mean we, all the agents and the Avengers, trust you so much. Literally, we all trust you with our lives. Maybe you are not ready to hear that now, but I said it.”

Maria looks at her shoes as she leaves, thinking “I’m sure…”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading. I'm trying not to hurt Maria too much. Believe me, she is one of my favorites...


	9. Hazards

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey there! Here's another chapter. 
> 
> I'm starting another semester in the morning so I may not be able to update as regularly as I have been. Or I might, depending on when I start getting busy and how focused I decide to be.

Maria couldn’t help but wonder about Natasha’s intentions. She wanted to withhold suspicion toward Natasha’s actions but had trouble chalking up her desire to spend time with and to be close with her up to anything not sinister. Or maybe not sinister per say but also not straight forward—a distinct any agent in a secret organization would know.

As Maria reasoned it, Natasha could want to comfort her so much that she had to resort to playing on Maria’s queerness to get close enough to support her. Natasha had the skills for this plot, and seduction, although one of the oldest ploys, opens doors in the spy world. Maria wanted to forget these missions, but she had seduced some evil men in her days as a field agent—so she knew the extent of its insincerity. Or maybe Natasha only knew how to get close to people by easily reading and exploiting their wants and interests. But despite her refined spy skills, Natasha might not actually know Maria wasn’t straight. The gayest thing she had ever done around the Avengers, she figured, was wear her brown leather jacket over her dress at Tony’s party during the Ultron incident, and she bet they didn’t spend that night analyzing the implications of her clothing choices.

Alternatively, Natasha could have a sincere desire to develop a more intimate relationship with her. Although, few women—many men though—had expressed an interest in her. She’d had a friend she saw while in the Marines, but Maria hadn’t cared to stress herself with keeping it secret so they never got too serious. Then there’d been a girl in D.C. who she called up every so often. That had been mostly physical by Maria’s choosing and no less concealed. If she recalled correctly, she never introduced her to anyone even as a friend, and when Maria had left for NY, she didn’t send as much as a text. She probably assumed Maria had been a Hydra agent and was either arrest, which many people wanted to happen despite her absolutely not being Hydra, or killed, an assumption that Maria kind of considered thrilling. She’d been the type to brag about getting to check to Hydra agent off her list of sexual accomplishments so Maria didn’t see the point in depriving her. Or so Maria told herself. Because she knew she was far from girlfriend material.

Sweet Natasha deserved better than her. As hard as Maria would find it, she’d have to resist Natasha’s further advances, if that’s what they were. She’d had to tell Natasha flat out they could not be together. Like the tired saying “it’s not you; it’s me,” except in their case, it’s not the Black Widow; it’s Maria Hill. Which would reflect terribly on her to anyone who didn’t understand Natasha like she did. She refused to be another person who let down Natasha, cared too much to risk it.

As Maria thought, she was monitoring the safety of Steve and Sam who had gone off the night prior on some secret, unspecified mission the night prior while scanning through news coverage from all the mid-to-large scale sources across the globe. She spotted no supervillain or otherwise suspicious or dangerous behavior that might concern them. Beside Coulson and his team’s continued exploits, but she knew they could handle whatever was happening with them. For some reason, the developments with the Inhumans had never come to the attention of the Avengers. She wanted to credit Coulson for his discrete handling of things, but she figure more likely the Avengers just all had too much of their own stuff.

Steve and Sam had to be out pursuing whatever that personal stuff was. Steve had told her to monitor their well-being but not to track their precise location. They’d send any needed information if they required assistance, but barring that, she wasn’t supposed to say anything to any of their teammates. Because secret agendas built off personal wants hadn’t just nearly destroyed life on earth and actually cost the Avengers their reputation. She didn’t foresee whatever Steve was up to(yes, Captain America, despite it usually being Tony or Natasha’s trick) ending well. But things never ended well around there. Unless averting the extinction of mankind counted as well, she guessed. But that came at a cost. She thought she had explained all her concerns to Fury before the Avengers Initiative happened. If she hadn’t, she could have penned out a report then “The Problem with Superheroes,” which at this point would resemble actual historical events as they unfolded.

But Maria had enough sense to know she wasn’t much better. Maybe that’s how she could justify her continued work there. She had had her secrets, agendas and loyalties, like anyone else except more so—secrets that had hurt people, that had hurt Natasha. In fact, right now, secrecy kept her from potentially helping a friend. If she could get Wanda to swear to never speak of it, she had considered introducing her to Daisy, a terrible idea she knew, but it couldn’t hurt for Wanda to have a friend with which she could commiserate, who understands her unique and often isolating experiences and challenges.

A knock comes from the door. Whoever it was was passing over the computerized alarm in favor of old fashion means. Maria sighs as she makes sure the news feeds cover each screen on which she was working. She hadn’t been avoiding people (again) as much as she just had scheduled more solitary tasks since the night she had gone running with Natasha. She wasn’t anxious enough to think anyone beside Natasha was looking at her with pity or whispering about her, but it felt like it, which made her uncomfortable. There’s more knocking.

“Open the door, Friday. Please.”

“Understood, Ms. Hill.”

“Thank you, Friday,” Natasha says as she swooshes through the door, a folder held under her arm.

Maria should have known and ignored the knocking, even though she knew Natasha knew her location because the computer system had told her.

“How can I help you, Natasha?”

“Whoa, with that tone, you might as well have called me ‘Agent Romanoff.’”

“You aren’t an agent anymore.”

Natasha throws up her hands, keeping the folder from dropping with her upper arm. “I brought a peace offering.”

“We’re not at war. Thus, there is no need for a truce.”

“I’m sorry you misinterpreted what I said before. I’ve just been trying to tell you that.” Natasha had sent her messages. Maria hadn’t responded. If they were apologies, Maria wouldn’t have known because she didn’t open them either.

Maria had turned to face Natasha so she’s perched on the edge of the desk, her arms crossed, chewing at her lip.

“I just mean—”

“Okay. You didn’t hurt me.”

“Good then.”

“Good.”

“Can I?” Natasha points at the desk with her hand that is holding the folder.

“I asked you what this is about. You didn’t give me a concise offer.” Maria had already given Natasha more time to explain herself than she had ever given her potential enemies. It had been explain yourself or face the consequences. No alternative or in between. She had assumed silence signaled resistance or an attempt at buying time. Her agents had gotten the same lack of the benefit of the doubt. Show up when called or face unfortunate reassignment. Stuff had gotten done. She had gotten respect.

Natasha dropped the folder on the desk. “You didn’t accept my answer.”

“I didn’t accept your premise, which made everything that followed it pointless. It’s basic reasoning.”

Natasha slid into the desk chair, swiveling to face Maria and resting her chin on her folded hands. She laughs like someone might when they know some crucial fact someone else doesn’t, like she’s solved some puzzle.

“I don’t have time for more games now. I have to work, unlike apparently you.”

“Now that’s just petty, Maria. You can do better.”

Maria agreed with Natasha—not about her pettiness or capacity for wittiness—that their conversations consisted solely of them exchanging quips, raising the stakes with each of their consecutive moves. Until it collapsed under its own weight. It was fun and arousing but not a solid foundation for a relationship.

“While I acknowledge that was a rhetorical jab at me, I’ll have you know training is happening now. They’re doing some practice battles against training robots. I’ll watch the footage later when I have more time to focus and critique them on their technique and teamwork.”

“But you personally are not working, am I correct?”

“Hah, hah. Bravo. The jury bought that interrogation. There’s that basic reasoning again.”

“What’s in the folder, Natasha?”

“Ah, right.” Natasha pulls the folder to her lap and opens it. “Snippets of reports I submitted to Fury over the years.” She smacks one sheet on the desk.

“…if it weren’t for ~~Maria’s~~ Agent Hill’s precise strategy and hawkish (Clint wanted me to write that as Hawkeye, but I refrained) monitoring, Agent Barton and I would have faced substantially more combatants and firepower. I suspect we would have suffered far more serious injuries and would doubtfully have neutralized the threat and averted further loss of civilian life. Have I not been saying all along that I feel safer knowing Maria is back there looking after us?” Natasha read from the paper.

She takes another sheet from the folder. “…I know I’m still relatively new and so maybe you don’t trust my judgement outside the field just yet, but I heard a rumor, which you probably know, and another rumor that rumors you started the first rumor, that you’re looking to appoint a new deputy director, and as someone who faces some of the most harrowing missions and comes out mostly unscathed because of Agent Hill’s work, I wanted to give my opinion. I know many people here devoted to our goals, who work hard and always come through. But Maria, I mean Agent Hill, stands out. Her loyalty, dedication, precision and concern for others… “ Natasha pauses and then adds, “I wrote that unsolicited.”

“And there’s more Clint added,” Natasha continues. “Agent Hill never overlooks anything, never falters or slips up. I work with Natasha who also never slips up, but I have seen her slip up. I’ve never seen Maria. P.s. I’m kidding about Agent Romanoff. She never makes mistakes either. But if you think about it, isn’t to err, to be human? And isn’t it precisely that humanity we are protecting. Vote Hill.”

“You never would have gotten away with submitting reports like that to me.”

“I know. We had to hide our jokes in secret code when we gave a report to you.”

“Really?”

“Of course not! We wouldn’t have wasted that much time on reports. It would be funny but still not worth the effort. Not more than once at least. There are better ways to have fun.”

Maria picks up the papers Natasha had left on the desk when she had finished reading them. “How do you even still have these?”

“I had a copy of the Word doc on my own flash drive. You know, because I had to type it out, save it, sometimes email it to myself… Came in handy, right?”

Maria flips through the papers, reading a sentence here and there. “Maria gave us the exact intel we needed, despite it not initially seeming useful…I don’t know how Hill organized getting reinforcements to where they were needed and how she got us all out alive, but it happened.”

It all boiled down to praise. No, not praise. Facts, about missions carried out by a now defunct spy organization. It was moot. She hadn’t seen Hydra in their ranks. She’d vetted agents who went on to hurt other agents. Maria looks back at Natasha.

“You’re not a joke. If we tease you, it’s because we care about you. If I tease you… I was hoping that had come across on its own, but since it didn’t, I had to say it.”

The computer beeps then. Maria’s eyes dart from it to Natasha. Steve had told her not to tell anyone, but she couldn’t just ignore whatever the beeping meant, in case Steve and Sam were requesting assistance.

Natasha nods toward the computer. “Don’t ignore that because of me.” She rolls the chair out of the way so that Maria can stand in front of the computer. “And don’t worry about revealing any top secret info. I know what they’re up to.”

Maria freezes, embarrassed. Steve had confided in Natasha about the nature of his activities, but he then asked her to monitor them without much of an explanation. Probably because he knew the training exercise the team had scheduled would prevent Natasha from giving it her full attention. Except Steve didn’t know Natasha was galivanting around, goofing off anyway.

“You know he didn’t give me any details, right? He didn’t even want me knowing where they were going, let alone why, and I’m the one making sure they don’t die. Tell me again how everyone trusts me.”

“It’s not like that, Maria.”

“It never is, is it?”

“You had already gone to New York when this started. I was more immediately there. That’s all.” Natasha sighs, resting her palms on her knees and breaking eye contact with Maria. “He’s looking for Barnes—the Winter Solider. You remember, the one who has shot me numerous times now. He’s Steve’s oldest and best friend. I warned him when I gave him the file we had on the Winter Solider, but he was adamant, and Sam’s his 21st century bestie. That’s all. We all have things we’ll chase, no matter how irrational it seems.”

“Okay.” Maria had de-encrypted the message. It read “Safe, coming home soon. Don’t wait up. We have the key.” Maria was glad someone was having fun.

“You’re upset.”

“I’m not.” Maria switches her screen back to the news.

“Good. Because what I’m about to say might upset you.”

“Didn’t you come here to cheer me up?”

“Secrets, half-truths, excluding vital information, whatever—it’s an occupational hazard in our line of work.”

“And we’ve chosen this. I still don’t see your point.”

“Don’t derail me.”

“You think I’m the one distracting you?”

“These secrets and lies, they get in the way of relationships, and there was literally a time when I would have laughed that off. What’d I tell Steve way back when… He’s in the wrong business if he wanted to make friends.”

“But now suddenly you’ve had some profound epiphany which grants you the moral high ground to preach to me?”

“Yes, this wisdom was imparted to me in a lucid dream in invisible ink on parchment disguised as…I don’t know, something…delivered by the patron of spies, and now I have to spread it.”

“Just go on if you have more to say.”

“But just because it’s supposedly part of the job, that doesn’t mean it’s right. For any of us. I was hurt so much by everything that happened with SHIELD. For some reference you will understand, it was way worse than being shot. So don’t act like you’re the only person who’s ever been excluded from knowing everything or who can’t fix everything by herself or anything else you’re whining about. You’re welcome to whine, but I care about you, and so if you’re going to hide behind secrecy—like we’ve always done—and throw that away, that’s on you. Not me or any of our other friends.”

Maria realizes that she’s supposed to cry here, apologize and thank Natasha for sharing her wisdom gained through her own mistakes. That’s the script for this scene. Maria also realizes that she should just stop trying to realize anything. Between her mental state and Natasha, mostly Natasha, she shouldn’t trust her own thoughts. She’s devoid of basic reasoning. At this point, she can’t imagine anything she could say.

But Maria doesn’t need to respond because Natasha plants her hands on her waist. Since she hadn’t expected the contact, Maria stiffens, but Natasha pulls her so she’d sitting on her lap in the chair regardless.

Maria can feel Natasha’s breath on her neck. She was thinking she was taller than Natasha so she might squish her by sitting on top but didn’t want to disrupt the moment with such silly details.

“I’m sorry if I’m being presumptuous. Mostly though, I’m sorry if I’ve been unfair to you lately. Honestly, I just wanted to hear your voice. I didn’t know how else… I figured you might respond to prodding too…”

Maria can feel Natasha quiver as she speaks, her voice breaking as if her throat is dry. Maria can’t listen to it, feel it any longer, needs to quiet Natasha. Or that’s what she tells herself. She puts her hands against Natasha’s shoulders, bending a bit so they’re at a similar height and presses her lips to Natasha’s. Beneath her, Maria can feel Natasha relax, her muscles loosening and head almost limp against Maria’s. Maria takes this as a sign to put her hands behind Natasha’s head and pull her closer. She has to fight her own urge to tense every muscle, which Natasha must have known because she wrapped her arms around Maria and rubbed at her back in a way Maria could only interpret as soothing.

After some time, Maria noticed she had messed up Natasha’s hair from raking her fingers through it, grasping at fistfuls while focusing elsewhere. She realized she had Natasha’s lower lip between her lips, and her tongue is skimming its surface, that her eyes are closed but their foreheads are touching. But they can only breath through their noses for so long, and eventually Maria pulls away, opening her eyes and taking deep breaths.

“Switch?” Maria was still worried about sitting on Natasha. Without speaking, Natasha scoots to the side of the chair, giving Maria, who then pulls Natasha into her lap, room to sit. Natasha leans into Maria, resting her head against her, and Maria puts her face against Natasha’s tangled hair. Maria feels tears in her eyes. She hugs Natasha closer as if that will stop them from falling.

Maria takes Natasha’s chin in her hand and brings it up so their eyes meet. Natasha just looks at her, doesn’t make any attempt to smile. She can’t read Natasha’s expression. It’s one she’s never seen before. With a small moan, Maria kisses Natasha again, this time with more urgency. Their lips meet and come closer together. Maria runs her tongue harder over Natasha’s lips.

Eventually, Natasha must leave because her phone rings, and something is happening with the other Avengers. Maria knows Natasha could ignore it, and nothing would explode, but she and Natasha look at each again, as if to come to the agreement that they should part then.

“I’ll see you again…?” Maria holds Natasha’s hand as she leaves, letting go only when their arms can’t reach any further. Natasha winks as she leaves.

Natasha comes to Maria’s room that night, and they lay in Maria’s bed under her blanket. They lay on their sides close enough to kiss, but mostly, they just lay there and watch one another, hands and feet entwined. Occasionally, either Maria and Natasha break the stillness by peaking the other on her lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! See you soon!


	10. Tight Spaces

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New chapter!

Maria knows Natasha and she should have discussed their new-found arrangement already and that this talk should have happened after the first time she had kissed Natasha or on one of the many nights they lay in Maria’s bed silently holding hands and looking into each other’s eyes. If not then, they should have done so before they found themselves hiding one evening in an armoire in the basement rec room.

They’d been sitting on the sofa giggling as they recalled the plot of a television show that they planned to re-watch together soon. Natasha had been leaning against the armrest with her legs stretched over Maria’s lap when they heard footsteps and conversation getting louder as people approached the room.

“…There’s a variety of different games people play. For insistence, many people enjoy first-person shooters. There’s a whole culture around it. Some people even play professionally.” Sam’s voice. Although, even if Maria didn’t recognize him by his voice, she’d reason it wasn’t Steve or Vision who knew about video games.

Natasha and Maria held their breath.

“But this all revolves around something innately not real, correct?” Vision’s tone made the simple inquiry sound philosophical.

“Technically. But some games are based off real events like wars or sports.”

“Why would someone want to play a game about a past war?”

“You know in the 20’s/30’s, kids would steal a broomstick from their homes or maybe find an old, discarded pipe and play ball in the streets…”

“Baseball—the great America pastime, until, that is, a certain someone introduced the country to superheroes. Then all the kids were either pretending to be superheroes or villains, stealing garbage can lids and painting them red, white and blue.”

“Kids were acting out wars long before video games…”

“It would seem you are referring to Steve. Why would you not so specify”

Natasha and Maria had to suppress further laughter to not draw attention to themselves. With the exchange of a nod, they scurried from their spot on the sofa to a storage unit against the wall behind the sofa, still trying to not laugh until they were behind the metal doors. In retrospect, Maria thinks they could have just scooted to opposing ends of the sofa and flicked on the television or pretended to be chatting. Nothing comprising in either of those activities. In fact, they had been chatting after all. But they had panicked, and their spy instinct kicked in. They weren’t there and hadn’t ever been but could have memorized the precise details of the scene they were scoping out. Sam was hooking up a game system while Vision and Steve were securitizing the controllers. They had taken over the sofa.

“Once it loads, stop hitting random buttons. They do things.”

Steve held the controller up. “It’s not even plugged in.”

“It works via Bluetooth. Such technology also allows you to talk without holding your phone, listen to music in your car or on a speaker from your phone, among many other things. Need I explain further? I can provide you with the history, technical specifications…”

“Bro 101,” Natasha mouthed at Maria and received a shrug in return because Maria couldn’t see Natasha’s face clearly enough in the darkness to read her lips. She repeated it in a harsh whisper.

“Actually, Cap, I know I said don’t touch any buttons but hit the one in the bottom center. Also, Vision, I bet you’ve got tons of experience with music, am I right?”

“I do not understand to what you are referring.”

“I see you with Wanda. You’ve got to be streaming something.” Sam grins at his own joke as he takes the controller from Steve.

“Ms. Maximoff has been introducing me to music native to Sokovia. It has been both informative and cathartic for her. She has also made me listen to some melodic metal bands she enjoys. I have come to find the almost antithetical mixture of sounds…fascinating.”

“Budding romance!” Natasha shrieks and then quickly covers her mouth. Maria slaps her.

“They’ll hear us.” She says through gritted teeth.

“Especially if you keep beating me up.”

“I barely touched you!”

Their conversation degrades into them slapping at each other’s hands.

If Natasha recognized sharing music as a sign of romance, Maria noted, she’d have to try it. Except she never listened to any music.

“What are we even hiding from?” Maria finally asks.

“Them” Natasha nods to the door. “The meeting of 21st Century Entertainment for Dummies: From Playstation to Bluetooth.”

Maria exhales. Natasha had interpreted that literally not figuratively like Maria had half intended it, but she hadn’t intended it enough to push it directly by saying something like “what are we really hiding from, Natasha?” Emphasis on the really. Although, she had no doubt Natasha could sidestep that question as well with a similar mildly creative response if she so desired.

“It’s Steve, Sam and Vision—they’re not exactly the biggest gossips on the team.”

“If Tony found us in a closet together, he’d publish it in his company’s newsletter and put it in a presentation to the board of directors. Front and center.”

Maria bites her lip. First, the current head of Stark Industries basically knew the situation, and she’d be proud of Maria for not only getting dressed and leaving her room but also talking to the girl she liked. Which she actually hadn’t done. But this counted. For them, it was the equivalent.

“First, this is an armoire not a closet. Second, you know who puts together those reports and presentations?”

“Friday probably.”

“Yeah, definitely Friday. If you count me working all night on Friday as Friday.”

Natasha holds up her hand. “Ten points for play-on-words. Minus ten points of being too obvious and… snarky.”

Maria goes to high-five Natasha’s raised hand, but she retracts it just before their palms touch. Natasha sticks her tongue out at Maria.

“Anyway, don’t underestimate Vision. I’ve heard rumors, he can be quite chatty. If for no other reason than his programming doesn’t always give him the best insight into when to say what.”

“Isn’t this just barrels of fun?” Maria steps back, stepping on a plastic box and almost falling. She catches herself against the side as a racket clatters to the ground.

“Don’t you mean armoires of fun?”

“It appears I have died.” Vision spoke as Natasha and Maria were holding their breath again bracing themselves from the noise.

“You’ll reappear. Lego Star Wars is marketed for kids so it can’t be too difficult. It’s almost impossible to die.”

“The ability to bring someone back to life… That could come in handy.” Natasha ponders, then clicks her tongue and continues, “but where’s the fun if you can’t die? If you can’t get caught…”

“Coming back from the dead… There’s never been a recorded case of that. Hey, you want to play badminton?” Maria picks up the racket she had just knocked over. Natasha takes it from her and swings it away from them. The metal edge scraps against the side of the armoire.

“Clint went undercover in a racket ball club once. The lucky guy. Survived long enough to get whatever we needed from the place. But I was waiting outside like an idiot. Because it made more sense to send a guy or whatever.” Natasha scrunches her face. “For the next few months, I made him play every racket sport, just to prove I could beat him.”

“And did you?”

“Not even once.” Natasha stretched out the not. “I’m faster than he is, but he has stronger arms. Because shooting arrows isn’t as easy as it looks. He knocked me over a few times with the sheer force with which he hit the ball.”

“That’s surprising. That anyone can beat you at anything.”

“We ended up in playing doubles against Bobbi—you remember Agent Morse—and Hunter, I think his name was. They beat us. Then Bobbie and I played against Clint, and we won.” Natasha shrugs but then goes quiet, letting the racket hung from her hand.

“What do you think happened to Agent Morse? We used to all go out for drinks, remember? Good times. She wasn’t…was she?”

Maria rapidly shakes her head. “Bobbie remained very loyal to SHIELD. She was not Hydra.”

“That’s good to know. At least we picked good friends.”

“She contacted me briefly and uh…helped take out some hidden Hydra cells. I needed all the help I could get. It was such a mess—multiple hearing with every government agency you could think of. Many of whom were tracking me. I didn’t know what to do. It was just damage control. So we could live to fight another day.”

“Which you did! You lived to fight another day, and on that other day, you saved us so we could live to fight another day. You did something right. Let’s not read into it any more than that. Anyway, part of the mess you had to deal with was my fault. I’m sorry.”

“No, I deserved it. You did what you had to. I just wish I had some of your guts.”

Natasha takes Maria’s chin in her hand and kisses her. “Hey, this is a happy occasion, not any time for frowns.”

“I’m not frowning,” Maria says as she wraps her arms around Natasha’s back, pulling her closer so she could feel Natasha against her as they kiss. She wanted to enjoy how Natasha teased her with her tongue, and she did. But even as she reciprocated the kiss, felt goosebumps on Natasha’s skin where she touched her back, Maria had a sinking feeling in her stomach. Something about that conversation had left her feeling weak.

Maria turned Natasha’s comment about them having chosen good friends over in her head. Natasha did seem to have a point. The agents that Natasha and her had spent the most time with, Coulson, Barton, Morse, May, Carter, none of them had been with Hydra. She had thought they had gravitated toward each other because of seniority or personal experience, but maybe something else had been the reason—something that could have alerted her to Hydra’s presence sooner had she had known. If only she had thought to look more closely at the patterns in their social groups… Or not. Fury’s friends had betrayed them after all. Wishful thinking.

In this case, hindsight wasn’t even 20/20. Maria had told Coulson after she had put him and his team in danger that he was right, that she and Fury should have seen Hydra sooner. But since then, she’d spent many hours trying connect the dots, reexamine data in light of her present full knowledge, and she still couldn’t see anything differently. Hydra had out-smarted, out-played her. That’s what hurt.

Natasha bit Maria’s lip. “Am I such a bad kisser that you have to daydream?”

The bite and the question had disorientated Maria. She’s trying to remember what had been happening when Natasha hugs. The hug is as good of an answer as she could find so she just hugs Natasha back, placing her chin on the other woman’s shoulder.

Maria would have kept holding on to Natasha, but she nudges Maria in the side.

“Ow.” Maria’s hand went to where Natasha’s elbow had touched her.

“Crap, did I actually hurt you? I was just trying to get your attention.” She hugs Maria again, much looser so she doesn’t further hurt Maria.

“No.” Maria rubs her side and takes a deep breath. “I’m okay. Just feeling a bit woozy.”

“Guess I have been forced to hide out in tight spaces more recently than you. You’re getting rusty with that desk job. Make sure you get up every hour or so because sitting too long isn’t healthy. Or get a treadmill desk.” Natasha takes Maria and pulls her closer to the crack between the two doors, the source of fresh air.

Maria feels queasy at the sudden movement. She stabilizes herself against Natasha who then squeezes her from the side. Maria slips around in her grasp and looks up at Natasha. It would have been romantic if Steve, Vision and Sam weren’t outside playing—or losing at from Sam’s exasperated tone and the objections by Vision toward all the things in the game that made no sense—Lego Star Wars. Or no, Maria didn’t care about them. They were irrelevant at the moment. Maria just wasn’t sure if it was supposed to be romantic. Although at this point, the evidence was pretty damning.

“What’s our endgame, Natasha?” They were still holding hands as Maria spoke, but she was staring into the room through the crack now.

“We wait for them to get more snacks?”

Maria pulls her hand from Natasha’s and puts it on her hip. “What are we hiding from?” Maria asks this question again, hoping Natasha won’t avoid it again.

“You’re looking at them.”

“We’ll say we got locked in while searching through the games.”

“One, there’s no lock. Two, why wouldn’t we just break out if there was?”

“Okay, you go out, distract them, and I’ll follow.”

“It should be you. It’s more believable that you’d get stuck.”

“I’m sure. About how many times would you guess I arrange an extraction for you and Barton?”

“That was on you. We knew the risk when we went in. Are you claustrophobic all of a sudden?”

“Claustrophobic?”

"The fear of small spaces?

“I know what it means and no.”

“Just wondering. Why else would you want out so badly? Not happy with the company?” Natasha kisses her again, distracting Maria with her hands and tongue until her eyes shut and muscles loosen. She then cracks open one of the doors enough for them to slip through. As soon as they’re free, Natasha flattens them to the ground.

“What was that?” Either Steve, Sam or Vision asks. From the ground, Maria couldn’t tell.

“A box and a racket fell out. Must have been stacked against the door. Someone just stuffed it in there after they last used it, it seems.”

While she had been kissing Maria, Natasha had gotten them out of the armoire and flush against the carpet so anyone looking in their direction wouldn’t spot them and had managed to knock something out to cover up any associated noise.

“Now what? They’ll come and find us crawling around?”

“Just crawl to the door. They won’t notice us. It takes more than two spies sneaking around to distract boys from video games. Also, we’re going to need to play that game sometime soon.”

Maria obeyed, the carpet burning her elbows as she dragged herself along, trailing behind Natasha who no doubt had a similar escape plan mapped out in her mind for every room she entered and could carry it off with her eyes closed even if she had been in the room only for a few seconds. But then again, she often did the same thing.

“That was fun!” Natasha says once they’re standing up in the hallway outside the doorway, out of sight of the room’s occupants. She peeks back inside; no one had moved or looked away from the game. “Maybe unnecessary but fun—hey, you look pale. Was there really not enough oxygen in there?”

“I must have stood up too quickly.” Maria felt some lingering dizziness from the blood rushing to her brain as she stood. The lights seemed brighter than usual.

“Let’s get some water into you.” Natasha grabs Maria’s hand and leads her down the hall. “We’ll take the elevator, ‘kay, so you don’t have to brave the stairs.” When Maria pouts, she adds “I know you can make it up a few flights but humor me please.”

Maria puts her head against the wall as they wait for the elevator. What had left Maria feeling ill had invigorated Natasha. It didn’t seem fair.

“You ate dinner, right?”

It had been a warm day for fall so the group at taken the opportunity to cook outside. Maria had spent the early afternoon at the shooting range and then transitioned to the gym to spar so they’d have an extra body as they rotated. The day should have left her hungry as usual, but she had had to force herself to eat. She’d mostly spent the meal watching the bright leaves rustle in the slight breeze.

Maria shrugged at Natasha. Once they’d gone back inside and it had just been her and Natasha on the sofa, she had felt better.

“Maria, shit, you should have said something. I’m going to feel bad if I kept you in a closet if you’re getting sick. We could have left, gone and relaxed somewhere more comfortable with more fresh air.”

Maria shakes her head as she leans against the elevator wall. “I barely noticed. Or at least not until you started throwing me around. I still wouldn’t change it though.” Smiling, she takes one of Natasha’s hands and puts her other hand against Natasha’s face.

“Good. I always figured being trapped in a tight space with you would be thrilling. And it did not disappoint. Even better that we could do it from the safety of our own home.” The elevator dings. As the doors open, Natasha kissed Maria on her forehead.

Always, Maria thought. And thrilling. Natasha had led them there. Hiding in a tight, dark space made sense for a date for spies, but if that really was Natasha’s idea of a date, they’d need to talk. Maria never considered herself to be fancy—it just wasn’t how she had grown up nor was it in her nature—but she wouldn’t mind dressing up, going to an elegant restaurant with Natasha and afterward taking a stroll along the water or through the park, ending the night with wine in the comfort of their own apartment. Or staying in and eating by candlelight in their own dining room if it just felt right that particular night. Which it probably would more often than not given how much the two of them seemed to enjoy doing nothing together. Natasha was the critical element in all these scenarios. Which was why Maria considered this evening when by all other accounts, she did not feel well to be perfect.

For now, Maria and Natasha are heading to the kitchen on the floor on which they lived, tightly holding hands. Natasha glances up at Maria and winks, and if Maria’s hadn’t felt lightheaded already, she would have then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> P.s. Maria is just fine. Maybe they can finally talk more when her defense are down though...


	11. Human

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, again. I said I'd be taking more time to update since the spring semester began.
> 
> But, alas, more "fun" with Maria and Nat. As a heads up though, illness, depression and some other potentially emotional things come up here. I tend to just like writing emotions more than anything.

Natasha sets a glass of water on the table in front of Maria. They’d gone to the kitchen, and Natasha had pointed at a chair while she went to the cabinets. Maria put her elbows on the table and rested her head on her hands, watching the bubbles settle against the sides of the glass. Natasha was behind her still rummaging for something.

Maria picked up the cup and tilts the water in it, her stomach feeling as topsy-turvy as it looked. Natasha slides into the chair across from Maria, dropping a sleeve of crackers on the table.

“These might settle your stomach. Maybe, depending on what’s irritating it.”

Maria gives a crocked smile to Natasha, who then takes Maria’s hand between her own. She shifts her head so it leans against Natasha’s hand.

“You okay?”

Maria doesn’t respond but let’s her eyelids drop. If she could just stay still.

“Maria?”

“I hear you.”

“You’re not going to fight with me about you being sick?”

“Am I supposed to?” Maria wraps her fingers around the glass, which had become wet at the water inside it warmed. “I am, aren’t I?”

Natasha strokes Maria’s cheek with the outside of her hand. “I’ll do it for you, don’t worry.” She clears her throat and starts in her usual voice, “Do you feel okay, Maria?”

“Of course, I’m fine. I can finish reviewing these dozen reports, give a presentation and then train for three hours.” Natasha replies to herself in a more serious, focused voice.

“Don’t be ridiculous. You’ll never get well if you don’t rest.”

“I said I’m fine! I’m not sick, and if I were, as long as I can stand—”

“End scene,” Maria actually says. “I’m not going to laugh because I’m dizzy enough, but rest assured I wouldn’t have laughed anyway. Your dialogue was stilted, and you relied too much on cliché activities.”

“If you say so… Do you want the water? If not, we should get you to bed. Maybe you can sleep this off. You’ll go lay down?”

Maria takes a tiny sip of water, like she’d had an eye dropper and let a single drop fall on her tongue. After swallowing it and closing her eyes, she drinks a few more mouthfuls, figuring if she was going to be sick anyway, she’d rather have water in her stomach than just whatever bile was left from digesting dinner.

“Sorry, I have a weak stomach. Literally at least, not figuratively. Ironic, isn’t it?”

“Ssshhh, you’re okay.” Natasha helps Maria to her feet.

“Could you drink on an empty stomach and not… get sick?” Maria feels flushed as they leave the kitchen. The light goes off behind them, and she squints as they walk through the hall.

“What?” Natasha stops and scrutinizes Maria, finally shaking her head. “You didn’t drink anything today, Maria. It’s probably some stomach bug. Come on, we’re almost to your room, but you’re going to have to open it.”

“You didn’t answer me…”

“I can drink vodka on an empty stomach, yeah. In fact, if I was feeling nauseous, I’d probably drink until the alcohol killed whatever was bothering me. But my ancestors had vodka instead of food or enough fuel to warm their homes.”

“Are you serious?”

“I’m not sure. But you’re not trying that.”

Maria puts one hand against the wall to support herself as the other hand punches in the code to her room.

“I can do a lot of things I shouldn’t be able to. They used to make us ingest small amounts of toxins or poison to build up immunity—enough so you felt it but not enough to seriously hurt you. If you let on that it bothered you, you were well…hurt more. Either way, when you weren’t at your best was exactly the time for the roughest training.”

Maria stands still in front of her door which had just opened. Natasha nudges her through, flicking on the light when she can.

“I’ll be in the bathroom while you change.” Natasha grabs her own pajamas she had left there from the nights she spent with Maria off the well-made bed and tossed back the blanket to make it easier for Maria to get in bed before disappearing into the bathroom.

For all the time Maria and Natasha had spent cuddling, they had not yet seen each other naked, and the night when Maria’s skin probably emitted a putrid green glow maybe didn’t present the best opportunity. Maria pulls a pair of shorts and a t-shirt from her top drawer and starts to pull her day cloths from her body. As she’s taking off her pants, she trips on one leg and topples into the mattress. She doubts she had ever had trouble changing before and was thankful Natasha hadn’t witness her trip but also wished she had so she would put her cool hands on her body and remind her which hole in her shirt she should stick her head.

Maybe that was a slight exaggeration, but Maria wanted Natasha regardless. Calling Natasha would guarantee she would come but would also mean Natasha would see Maria vulnerable like this, which Maria never wanted anyone to see but which had been happening more often recently. If Maria let Natasha stay that night, she would see her weak and unsteady, not composed. Worse yet, she’d try to take of Maria, which she couldn’t have. Except she could.

Maria left her cloths in a pile by her dresser, unheard of for her, but acceptable at that moment and crawls across the bed until she reaches the spot where Natasha had revealed the sheet. Huddling under the blanket, she waits for Natasha, who eventually emerges from the bathroom, having changed and gotten ready for bed herself, and hurries to Maria’s side.

“Jokes aside, I think I’m dying.”

“I’d miss you too much.” Natasha hugs her close, one hand on her back and the other on her face. She had a flashback to their mission years ago when Natasha had soothed her miserable self. The gesture, welcome as it was, had startled her then. Now she could reach up and kiss Natasha, knowing she would kiss her back, hold her closer and still be there in the morning, not denying anything.

“I said…joke aside.”

Maria jerks up, out of Natasha’s arms. “I’m going to…”

Natasha nods in response, following Maria.

****

“I texted Steve and told him you weren’t feeling well so I was going to keep you company today. He can hold down the fort—or maybe more accurately hold the lid on the pressure cooker.”

Maria props herself on her left elbow, watching Natasha as she puts her phone face down on the bedside table and adjusts a pillow so she could more comfortably sit next to Maria in bed.

“More proof I’m useless…” Earlier in her career, Maria had never taken any sick days—literally, in her time in the Marines, she didn’t miss a single day. She couldn’t quite say the same about SHIELD though; there’d been a few sketches of time when she and Fury, mostly him, found it necessary for her to step away, but she tried not to dwell too much on them.

Natasha puts her hand to Maria’s forehead, then her cheek, concern evident in her expression. “Do you have a thermometer? I can get one from medical if not.”

Maria puts her arm over Natasha to keep her from moving. “You said you’d stay. And that you weren’t going to insist upon sticking anything in my mouth…”

“You being coherent and not talking nonsense was the condition, Maria.” Natasha strokes Maria’s hair, which had come out of the ponytail when Maria kept rolling over in the night trying to find a cooler, and later less damp with sweat, spot on her pillow. Come morning, Natasha had changed her pillowcase for her but had further messed her hair when she combed her hand through it so she could put her hand on the back of her head to massage her fingers on her scalp. And pull Maria closer so she could kiss her forehead and then her mouth when the ill Maria didn’t object.

“You are…” Maria flops on her back.

“At least let me put a cloth on your forehead? You might be more comfortable. I saw you squirming.”

Maria pulled the comforter over her face, to say don’t look at me, you don’t need to see my unconscious reactions to being miserable. She felt the same exposure as when she had to let others look over tactical briefings or reports after she had scribbled her initial comments on them. It felt like mindreading, pulling back the curtains to reveal mechanisms she’d rather keep hidden. The bed where Natasha had been sitting rises.

When Natasha returns, she slowly takes the comforter off Maria’s head. “Hey there, I was worried you weren’t breathing. Here.” 

Maria shivers when Natasha lays the wet cloth on her forehead.

Natasha frowns, adjusting the cloth so she could still see Maria’s eyes. “You usually get fevers when you’re sick?”

“Unfortunately. They’re rough to work through, with all the cognitive…brain…inefficiencies they cause. Why?”

“Just asking, so I can best take care of you. You know your own body better than I do. Way better than I know my own body I’m sure”

“You’re very in tune with your body. You have perfect coordination.”

“So do machines. It’s calculated. Efficient. That is different than feeling, is it not?”

“I wouldn’t ask me. I am neither philosophical nor can I recognize more than like two feelings.”

“To not want feelings, you must have feelings. A fortune cookie’s words, not mine. Have some water.”

“No water.”

“You’re mostly water. You need it. How do you feel?

“If we were invaded, I’d need your help to fight them off.”

“That bad?”

Maria nods. Natasha strokes her tangled hair, leaving her hand so it frames her face.

“What usually helps you feel better?”

“Crawling up in a ball.” It wasn’t a lie. It was an artefact of having no parent to hold her when she didn’t feel well as a child. She would tuck her as close together as she could, so she at least had the physical contact from her own body to comfort her. But even Natasha probably thought she was just saying that now. Maria relaxes into Natasha’s solid grasp.

“We’ll go somewhere fun when you feel better. I’ll have to make up for you being sick and last night when we were stuck in the closet. What do you think?”

“Opera… or a symphony orchestra…” Maria envisions Natasha and her riding in a limousine, sipping champagne as they drive slowly through a street brightly lit with flashy colorful signs. Natasha is wearing a black gown whose long skirt is slit up to her thigh. She sits perpendicular to Maria, her legs crossed so the one exposed by the slit is closest to Maria.

They had fretted over what Natasha should wear before choosing that one at the last minute. Natasha had been leaning toward a silver satin dress with a wide, low swooping neckline and thin straps that slanted over her shoulders, but Maria had wanted to see her in this black dress again. Or maybe she had just wanted to watch Natasha unzip the dress, letting it slip down her body until gathered in a sparkly puddle at her feet. Maria had approached from behind, watching Natasha’s reflection in the mirror. She had placed her hands on Natasha’s shoulders, feeling her tremble beneath her touch. Natasha had looked up at Maria as she drapes her arms over Natasha’s chest. Maria kisses her lips, breaths and kisses the tip of Natasha’s nose, finally resting her head against Natasha’s.

Then Natasha had had to redress in the black gown and slip on black heels with clear jewels at the intersection of the thin straps. Maria had chosen to wear a form-fitting tuxedo, her hair tightly wound into a bun on the middle of the back of her head. For some reason, she has a top hat and a well-polished chain watch as well, which she clicks open as she waits while Natasha makes her way to the door, her silk clutch under her arm. Their hands meet as Natasha sets out and Maria helps her onto the red carpet. Holding hands, they sashay over the red carpet which covers first the steps up to the door and then the marble floor, earning whispers from other attendees loitering in the entrance hall sipping wine before the performance begins. They ascend the grand stair well to a booth above the stage. Once they’re sitting, Maria slips her hand under the slit of Natasha’s dress so she can rest her hand on the bare skin of Natasha’s thigh.

“Maria? Maria is that your fantasy?”

“My what?” Maria blinks. The slight ache in her throat and head, combined with Natasha’s grin, her face scrunched from holding in laughter make her realize she’d been rambling that whole description of their date.

“Your real fantasy is so much better than anything I could ever dream up to tease you about. Thank you.”

“The orchestra was unicorns and alligators.”

“So it was an orchestra and not an opera? And no, I don’t think it was unicorns. I think it was ordinary human musicians.”

“Stop making fun of me. I’m sick. Have you no shame?” Maria shifts her position to more comfortably sustain eye contact with Natasha, her legs moving beneath the comforter as if she was treading water.

“I’m not teasing you, Maria. I’m taking detailed mental notes so I can one day give you what you want most. For now, I think we can do Broadway. You can still wear a nice suit.”

“Now you’re just being homophobic…” Maria freezes when she hears herself say it. There’s a pang in her stomach as if the words had upset her system the same way ingesting anything would at that point. She leans her head back so the washcloth slips down to cover her eyes.

Natasha lifts the cloth from Maria’s face and presses it between her hands. “This is getting warm. I’ll be right back. Stay right there.”

“Hah, hah…” Maria mumbles as Natasha goes to the bathroom sink. The water goes on, and the sound makes Maria queasy. No water, she had told Natasha and had meant it.

“Nat…” Maria calls as loudly and clearly as she can muster, which she hopes didn’t mean a moan because she needed Natasha.

Maria tries to at least sit up so she doesn’t choke, which proves challenging until she feels a hand prop her up. Natasha holds a bowl in her other hand so Maria doesn’t make a mess as her stomach lurches.

Maria breaths in and out through her mouth as Natasha rubs her back. “Shit, Maria, you’re really sick.”

“Nope,” Maria whispers as Natasha pulls her into a loose hug. Tears well in Maria’s eyes, partially because feels awful enough to cry but more so because Natasha is holding her.

“You don’t have to be embarrassed.” Natasha had stacked pillows against the headboard so Maria could rest against them.

“I’m not… You can see me sick. I like you too much to deprive you of that.”

Natasha opened her mouth to speak but hesitated, fidgeting with the cloth with which she had resumed dabbing at Maria’s face.

“I meant about before… when you got nervous after… joking about me being you know, homophobic.” Natasha is shaking ever so slightly as she speaks.

“Which you can’t be because your best friend is gay?” Maria looked to the side, wondering if Natasha still had the bowl because this conversation making her sick again. But she had been conscious that time in her mention of her sexuality. Although, she had wanted to say “girlfriend” instead of best friend but wouldn’t until she knew Natasha was on the same page. And probably wouldn’t then either.

Natasha doesn’t respond right away, taking enough time for Maria to rest her aching head against the headboard.

“You’ve got me speechless. I suppose you won.” Natasha finally says.

“Did you know?” Maria asks without lifting her head or opening her eyes. Her head doesn’t hurt as much as her stomach, but she’d still rather not move it. Yet now seemed like the time to have this conversation. “That I am gay, that is.”

“I figured. It was your brown jacket and the boots you always wear. And you roll up your jeans and read a lot and are badass.”

“All of which straight women do as well.”

“You’d go quiet. When we used to talk about men. When we would hang out with Bobbi and Sharon and whoever else on our girls’ night, I’d notice when Bobbi would talk about her literal love-hate relationship with Hunter, you’d take more sips of your drink than usual or take a bit of something, on cue. Which, fine, okay, maybe that one specific topic was weird for you. But when me or someone else would ask Sharon if she met any cute guys or had any fun dates or vice versa, you’d really get restless. Your face would be less expressive as if you were hyper aware of your every action. You would hardly contribute to that conversation or drink anything as if you were afraid you would spill it and reveal how your hands shook. Or you’d just make some excuse to get up, be gone for a while until the conversation went back to weapons or movies. I figured you were avoiding the topic of dating or men. I couldn’t know but suspected you didn’t want to have to lie or hide anything so I never asked you.”

Maria thought back to those nights. As well as she could remember, Natasha never had asked her. Bobbi and Sharon had a few times but didn’t push it. Maria had assumed the subject was never pushed with her because technically she was their boss.

“Why didn’t you say something?”

“It wasn’t my place. I could tell you were uncomfortable.”

“We were friends… weren’t we?”

“Of course, Maria. I…just…I didn’t know for certain what your favorite food was either, but I think friendship is sometimes more than frivolous stuff like that.” Natasha takes Maria’s hand and brings it to her heart. “Right?”

Maria hums in agreement. “We are who we are.”

“That’s what I like about us.”

The “us” reverberates through Maria’s mind, wondering if Natasha meant “us” as a couple or “us” as two kindred souls. Or both. But Maria was hoping either way, it included the former.

“What about you?” Maria’s throat had felt fry from avoiding fluids, but her question only made it worse. “You… about not being straight…sexuality?” She searches for a hint of a response from Natasha to save her from her floundering.

“I don’t know. I guess I don’t have one, not that I’m aware of anyway.”

Maria wondered if perhaps she’d reached the end of Natasha’s desire for openness, her willingness to confide in Maria.

“How did you know?” Natasha asks.

Somehow the conversation put Maria back on the spot. She rubs at her temples. It still wasn’t the toughest question she ever had to answer while ill.

“Does it matter?”

“If you want my explanation to make the most sense, it does.”

The crush on the subordinate in the Marines hadn’t been the reason she knew, only the reason she could consciously accept it. Or maybe it had been the reason she knew. Maria remembers a girl in middle school she pretended annoyed her so she could have an excuse to think about her. She had kept a diary and logged all the things she had done that day to annoy Maria—that is, that made Maria’s young, gay heart flutter. When she had watched television, she cared far more to follow the women characters’ stories, but she had told her she admired them.

“In my early twenties, I wondered why I hadn’t ever had a crush. I blamed it on my cold demeanor and depressive nature. But really, I couldn’t recognize how certain women lingered in my mind as crushes. Because it wasn’t supposed to be that way.” Maria huffs. “My father would have sent me to conversion therapy—after he beat it out of me. I know this because he told me once in a drunken rant. He was rambling about how he always suspected my mom’s sister was a queer, and he blamed my mom’s death, which usually was my fault, on the fact that she had come to their wedding. It cursed them, he said.”

Natasha’s face had grown pale. “You know how fucked up that is, right? My childhood was fucked up too, sure, but I was literally kidnapped by the Russian government and trained to be the ultimate assassin/ spy. That was never going to not be fucked up. Par for the course. Never was going to be warm and cuddly. But your life…could have been.”

“You are warm and cuddly though.” Maria flops over Natasha, hugging her. Natasha chuckles in response. “If you keep up this nonsense, I’ll force fever meds down your throat.”

“You are soft. That’s what I like…about us.”

Natasha loosen her hug and moves Maria’s body off her so she can look Maria in her clouded eyes. “I’m not. You know that. You know I am jagged and rusty. And I always will be.”

“No, I don’t know that, and I won’t ever. And you have to believe me because I’m too feverish to lie.”

“You’re sweet. That won’t change reality though. What I was getting at earlier is that sexuality takes time to figure out, lots of thinking, which I never got to do. My body, my sexuality was a weapon. It wasn’t my own.” She kisses Maria on the head. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll let you rest now. You’ll never feel better if you don’t sleep. We’ll talk more later.”

“That’s not true. I’ve never taken it easy when sick, and I’ve always managed to feel better eventually.” But Maria closes her eyes anyway as Natasha covers her with the blanket. Her mind lingers on the “us,” shuffling through memories to figure out what her favorite part of them was.

****

Maria finds herself locked behind the tarnished bars of a jail cell, looking down at the puddle forming at her feet from the leaking roof. Where her own reflection should have been, Natasha’s face stares up at her—although the sepia tint of the scene distorts her image. Maria puts her hands to her face—to see if the reflection would mirror her movement, if she could feel her own hands.

Maria had been watching that scene on a small black and white television while sitting on the floor in a room that resembled the apartment in which she had lived with her father growing up. She spots one of her books atop the television, propping up the antenna used to tune in to whatever show she’d been inside or watching, whichever. She couldn’t remember at that point. Approaching footsteps make the floor creak. Maria wants the book but can’t reach it in the time before he stands over her. He whacks the side of the television. The book opens and falls to the floor. Maria flinches.

“You’re useless,” he says. She’s breathless.

****

Maria opens her eyes, feels the fabric of her pillowcase against her face and the shallowness of her own breathing, as if her gasping had woken her, but her heart wasn’t pounding. She hadn’t shrieked or gasped because she sees Natasha next to her still focused on her tablet, undisturbed. She lays on her stomach as she tries to process her newly regained consciousness.

“Hey, you,” Natasha says when she realizes Maria is awake, brushing strands of hair from Maria’s face. “Did you sleep well?”

“Did I sleep well?” Maria has no memory of her own sleeping. She wants an answer to her own question. There’s a tension beneath her disorientation.

Natasha shrugs. “You were mostly still and silent, which is an improvement over last night.” She again presses her hand to Maria’s forehead. “Your face is warm and red, probably from sleep on it though.”

Maria rolls onto her back. “I’m sure that nap is all I needed.”

“Good, so you’ll have some water now?”

Maria groans. They’d both been in the field longer than this without access to water so why wouldn’t Natasha just let the water issue go.

“Seriously though, I got ginger ale. It won’t upset your stomach.” Natasha holds up a cup of warm, now flat soda.

“Did you google how to care for a sick person and fixate on the results ‘offer fluids?’”

“You know I don’t have much experience here. Don’t rub it in.”

“I can tell you’re guilt-tripping me into drinking that.” Maria takes the cup, peering into its light bronze content. She sips the ginger-smelling soda. Tasting it in her dry mouth makes her want to gulp it down, but Natasha stops her.

“Be patient.” Natasha kisses her nose.

“You don’t want to kiss me right now. Or be near me either. My breath has got to be sickening. Anyway, I’m afraid I’m going to get you sick.”

Natasha presses her finger to Maria’s lip. “Now is a little late to think about that, after you’ve nearly thrown up on me. But you won’t, honey, don’t worry about that now.”

“Stomach viruses are some of the most contagious—oh, right…”

“Right, what?” As if they both didn’t know what Maria was referring to. They both frequently joked about Natasha’s experiences so it wasn’t as much an elephant in the room as part of the air between them. And at times that air became toxic as if from pollutants sometimes buried, sometimes exposed by the wind.

“So you don’t know how this feels—to be sick, I mean. I’d tell you, but it is hard to put words to it beyond the obvious.” Anger bubbles inside Maria. She knows it had forced its way into her tone. The word “useless” stuck in her head. She was useless because she was vulnerable. Because she was human.

“Stop, Maria. I know you’re hurting. And I don’t mean from being sick now.”

“Fuck, Nat. When did you become a doctor? Analyzing my words for hidden meaning. Did your training prepare you for this as well?”

“I’m sure you can imagine it did.”

“So I’m a mission you’re saying?”

Natasha takes a deep breath. “I’m saying please calm down.”

“Or what? I’m going to make myself sicker. Kill myself somehow? As if. You know how programmed we are to survive.” Natasha was right, when she said it. Maria was hurting.

“Did you have a bad dream or intrusive thought since you went to sleep?” Once again, Natasha gets it, and Maria hates her for it.

“Am I some pet project of yours that you’re trying to fix? If you’re trying to make me feel less worthless, you are having the opposite effect. I’m not a superhero like you—immune to everything.”

“I’m a monster, Maria. Say it as it is. You have no idea.” Her look of confusion at Maria’s sudden hostility morphs into a blank expression. A look Natasha hadn’t given her in a long time.

“Nat, no, I’m sorry.” The anger had burned off. She hadn’t wanted to snap at Natasha even as she watched herself do it. She regretted it. “It’s me.”

“Want to hear a funny story?”

“I’m assuming it’s mandatory.” Maria tries to joke again, but Natasha doesn’t play along.

Instead Natasha takes Maria’s hand. Maria’s stiff from the influx of emotion, but she relaxes at the unexpectedness of her touch. She collapses into Natasha. Because most fundamentally, it is Natasha.

“Clint and I had just gotten home from some mission—a Clint mission. We used to have a running competition about who we perceived did the most work that mission—silly, I know because we were partners, but you know, you need material for your inside jokes. He won that time, not even close, which rarely occurred, but I was spacey and tired so I conceded.”

“Okay, you’re not perfect. I didn’t actually think you were.” Maria goes to cross her arms over her chest, but Natasha leans where she would have put them. She smiles up at Maria.

“That wasn’t the moral of that story—tangential backstory. Anyhow, the next day, I show up as usual except first thing, I go to Clint’s office because I was freaking out. I’d been up all night because my head had felt full of pressure and my throat was raw, which was a totally new sensation for me. I needed to tell Clint that I thought I had been injured or poisoned and ask if he remembered what could have done this to me so we could to fix it. He was like ‘whoa, Nat, your eyes are all puffy.”

His first reaction to seeing me scared me even more, right, because it wasn’t just in my head but visible, and if it was visible, it had probably gotten deadly already. Then I sneeze, quite forcefully, enough to hurt my chest. He wraps his arm around my shoulder and just kind of stayed like that for a minute, which made me think he was bracing himself for my imminent death. Eventually, he chuckled and told me it seemed like I had a cold, which I said has not and could not ever happen. I had some cocktail of immunity boosting/ strength enhancing serum injected during training at a young age. We went to medical anyway though, and the doctors drew some blood to figure what was happening inside me. Apparently, the results matched the normal immune response to a virus. Strange day.” Natasha pauses here to raise her eyebrows at Maria and give her a tilted grin. She then takes the cup of soda from the table and gives it to Maria, who takes a few more sips. Her stomach felt better so she could probably keep more down, but she didn’t dare try. The memory was too fresh. But ginger ale she could do.

Once Maria sets the now empty glass back down and wipes her mouth, Natasha continues her story. “Clint sent me home after they confirmed it was just a minor illness and not anything to worry about. I did worry—or maybe worry isn’t the best word, dwell on might be better—about it though. Despite feeling unwell, having a cold intrigued me. I lay on the sofa pondering the irritation in my throat, wondering how something so invisible could drain all my energy. It’s weird really. Sorry, this is gross.”

“You’ve just spent the past day with me.”

“Clint came by and brought me soup later. He kept reassuring me it was okay to be sick. It was just a thing that happens to people sometimes whether we like it or more likely, not. Right?”

Maria shrugged.

“Exactly, you have never given it much thought. You’ve taken it for granted.”

“Hated it.” Which wasn’t exactly true. Maria had a complicated relationship to illness, given it gave her the only legitimate reason to not work and the only justification to potentially, hypothetically not be perfect. Even if as a child, it had meant loneliness and fear.

“It always made me feel better to know I wasn’t so far gone. To be human—it’s a privilege I never had… Think about it. I was in my twenties and have never had a cold before.”

“Don’t say that. You’re plenty human.” Maria sits up straighter as she says this.

“Let’s not argue this point. You won’t win.”

“So what, you want me to go along with you calling yourself a monster?”

“Yeah. It is what it is.”

“Your past, yeah, that did happen, no arguing that. It is what it is. But you’re here now. What brought you to stay up with me all night, to skip whatever you had planned for the day to sit next to me while I mostly slept. Algorithms? Bloodlust? I’d say empathy. You said you were mentally taking notes on my alleged fantasy.” Maria says empathy because she once again doesn’t dare use the word she’s thinking.

Maria would tell Natasha if she could, even at the expense of sounding needy and immature. She loves Natasha enough that she would start an argument instigated by feelings drudged up from a dream and reminders her own weakness, while lying in the dark beside her, compromised in so many ways. Enough that she would reveal anger when they bother know it’s a slippery slope into sadness.

“I’ve got some plans.”

“How monstrous of you. You can be hurt and human, Natasha, filled with guilt and regret, confused… You don’t get a pass on that shit that easily.”

“What’s your point?”

“That…that…I don’t know. We’ll go to a department store’s home section and pick out some decorations that says ‘the past is past. The present is…I don’t remember what the present it, but the future is a gift.”

“You’re so funny, Maria. In such a raw, non-contrived way. You should let that side of you out more.”

“Only for you…” Maria leans back against the headboard and puts her hands behind her had. Her voice had an inflection to it that suggested she was joking, which was good because she wasn’t.

“But the essence is true. We may be what we are, but dare I say it…we’re not lost causes. Please, understand that. And don’t make me be the voice of reason again.” She loved Natasha enough that she would defy her own depressive thoughts if it would stop Natasha’s foolish self-doubt.

“Says the great Agent Hill—literally the voice of reason within SHIELD.”

“You wouldn’t have defected to SHIELD, be trying to wipe out the red in your ledger, joined the Avengers if you believed you were a lost cause. There’s still the future…”

Natasha smirks. “Right back at you.” She quickly kisses Maria’s nose.

“Oh, come on,” Maria says as she realizes Natasha had wanted her to say that aloud for as much her own benefit as Natasha’s. “Is this how we’re going to play this?”

“Only for you…” Natasha leans back as well. “I’d poke you in the stomach now, but that just wouldn’t be fair.”

Maria guards her stomach with her arms. “It’s not the same.”

“What isn’t?”

“You, me—you never had a choice. You have never run away.”

“That isn’t true, Maria, but also not the point now. How long have you felt like this?”

“Why do I always seem to be the point but never you?”

“Because I hate seeing you so down, hearing you put yourself down.”

“That would make this more about your feelings then, not mine.”

Natasha sighed, gazing up in thought. “Can you honestly tell me that you aren’t…that you’re happy. No happy is a shitty word to capture this. That you aren’t depressed—can you say that, honey?”

Natasha’s word choice wasn’t lost on Maria—not that time or earlier. Maria looks at Natasha, who looks at her no less intently, longing for Natasha’s confidence, poise.

“Do we have to have this conversation now?” Maria slides down onto her back under the blanket. “My head hurts, and I bet I have a fever still.” She pulls the blanket to her chin. “See, shivering. Doesn’t that worry you?”

Natasha touches the back of her hand to Maria’s face. “You do feel warm still. If you’re uncomfortable, you should take something.”

“I’m fine.” Maria crosses her arms under the blanket.

“We’re having this conversation now because not feeling well has lowered your defense.”

 “That’s cheating. I can stop talking at any point, you know.” Maria couldn’t. She’d crossed the line where she could stop long ago.

“How long, Maria? Have you felt depressed?” Natasha lays next to her so they are eye to eye.

Maria rolls her head to face away from Natasha. They chose that word for her. To Maria, it had been an ever-present part of herself. It came as the emptiness she felt when weekends had been a thing for her, when nothingness spread out before her until she could return to the world on Monday. When she felt weighed down but could still float through work because as long as she had the Avengers, Stark Industries, SHIELD, the Marines and before it school and sports, she could justify her existence.

“For as long as I can remember. But off and on since I’ve been an adult—the worst of it anyway.”

Natasha finds Maria’s hand under the blanket, squeezes it. “What has helped? I mean, have you done anything about it? Have you seen a doctor?”

Maria looks back at Natasha and just stares blankly, asking “what do you think?” without any words.

“Fair.”

“No, that’s not exactly true. I’ve been sent to albeit mandatory therapy, been offered medication, which I never took because I worried it would interfere with work.” Maria shrugs. “I’ve gotten by. But yeah, stern, unaffected Commander Hill was depressed all that time.

“Thank you for sharing that. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. You’re—”

“I’m not ashamed, not really. It’s just not something I go around saying. Like my sexuality too. I have not been quite as popular with everyone as I am with you. You can’t give anyone anything.”

Natasha brushes Maria’s hair from her face, rubs at the back of Maria’s neck so her eyes close from the soothing feeling.

“I’ll fight anyone who holds it against you.”

“Yeah?” You’ll have to fight the whole world then, Maria thinks, again.

“Nick never lost faith in you.”

“No…” Maria feels tears prick at her eyes. “It’s been worse since everything with SHIELD. Losing it, the decisions I had to make afterward, walking away.”

“While I was lying around not feeling well, during the time I told you about before, Clint and I reasoned I’d probably always gotten sick occasionally, but I could suppress it so well, I never felt anything. But…once I knew I was safe, with SHIELD, I guess, I didn’t feel the need to anymore. Wasn’t alone, wasn’t being hunted as much, could watch movies all day.”

“God damn, stupid, soft and fluffy SHIELD.”

“Like a big hug.”

“Why’d Hydra have to have infiltrated it from the start? SHIELD was always sketchy, tons of secrets and grey areas…” Maria hugs Natasha closer against her, burying her face into her neck.

“But it was our secretive, sketchy spy organization. Or so we thought. It sounds silly, but—”

“I’ll stop you there. It doesn’t. At SHIELD, I was able to put my guard down, so I could keep my guard up, so to speak. I could be my hard-ass self more easily. I don’t know…what I am without that…even at Stark Industries and less so here but honestly. No offense to anyone here. It’s me.”

“It’s not you. I feel the same. Agent Romanoff replaced Black Widow, gave me Natasha Romanoff. Is that true anymore?”

“Well, to be fair, you are still an Avenger.”

“There’s that. Somehow I ended up as Black Widow again.”

“SHIELD collapsed, and all I got was the Avengers.”

“You’re too funny. We’re going to write you a stand-up routine, and that can be who you are now.”

“Didn’t we only recently fight over you implying I’m a joke?”

“Observant too.” Natasha kisses her.

“Who me? No.”

“Well, then… A superhero? Who me? Nooo.”

“I hate to break it to you, but you’re not so special there. Haven’t you ever heard of imposter syndrome? You score some billion ‘human points’ for that. Probably enough that you’ll have to concede.”

“I’d say well-played except it was an illegal move. The rules forbid the kettle calling the pot black. That’s the expression, right?”

“Oh no, I don’t have imposter syndrome at all. I just disassociate and depersonalize.” Maria sticks her tongue out, and Natasha can’t help but kiss her again.

“Okay, you really do have bad breath.”

“I’ll brush my teeth when I can stand again. I’m sorry. This isn’t always fun, is it?”  

“Will you try eating?”

“Not likely. Seriously, let’s just leave it at that.”

“You wanna go to sleep then?”

“Probably a good call.”

Maria flips onto her stomach, adjusting her position to the one in which she usually falls asleep. Natasha scoots against her so their bodies are touching, before she too settles in to sleep.

“Hey, Nat?”

“You okay? You need something?”

“I need you to tell me what your fantasy is.”

“Good night, Maria.”

“Not so fast.”

“Never had the opportunity to dream one up.”

“That’s not going to work anymore, sweetheart.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	12. SHIELD, pt. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is more flashback for the most part (and more Wanda talking to Maria about her relationship with Natasha).

Wanda brings Maria chocolate muffins late the next afternoon. Maria had been sitting up in bed working on her laptop since mid-morning, with a mid-afternoon nap to break up the day. She’d convinced Natasha she could leave her and return to training because she felt much better today, which she did, and planned to sleep all day anyway, which she had—planned to, that is. At lunch time, Natasha had brought her plain white toast and chicken broth, at which Maria had scowled.

“If you had to bring me bread and soup, couldn’t it have been grilled cheese and tomato soup?” Despite her objections, Maria had sat up and taken the tray from Natasha. As she nibbled at the toast first, she leaned forward so the crumbs fell on the tray and not her.

“Cheese and tomato would be terrible for your recovering digestive system.” Natasha had sat on the edge of the bed, making Maria grip the tray tighter to prevent it from spilling from the movement. Once it’s steadied, Maria returns to dipping the toast in the broth.

“I’m just glad you’re feeling better.”

“Uh huh,” Maria had said through a mouthful of soggy bread. Aside from some lingering fatigue, she felt almost like her regular self again, except she felt herself craving certain foods more than usual.

Soon after, Wanda had texted her that she had a surprise for her and would be stopping by later, to which Maria had replied with “it is food?” and what she now knew to be a winking face.

“Not saying! You’ll have to be patient.”

Maria remembered the meek woman who had had trouble maintaining eye contact with any of the Avengers when she had first arrived, who had looked away from her and Natasha the first time they had all hung out. Life with the team had made her more confident—confident enough to tease Commander Hill—and hopefully, Maria thought, helped her heal from the trauma, like SHIELD had for her and Natasha way back when. Although Maria had no doubt that more trauma lurked around the corner so she just hoped Steve could maintain, and convince the others to adhere to, his resolve that the team could ‘do it together’ so the team didn’t collapse. Unlike SHIELD. She wouldn’t wish that feeling on anyone.

When Wanda did finally come, after finishing training, showering and eating, Maria snatched the container from her with a slight grin and a glimmer in her eye. She tried to catch the muffin crumbs with her hand, but this time, they fall mostly onto her faded SHIELD hooded sweatshirt and keyboard of the laptop still on her lap—although the screen had gone black.

“In case the muffin makes your mouth dry.” Wanda, still standing next to the bed, sets a can of Mountain Dew on the bedside table next to the ginger ale and pain and anti-nausea medication Natasha had left for Maria.

Maria takes the soda Wanda had brought, smudging the chocolate on her fingers on the can and the tab as she opens it. “Sit down,” she says before gulping down the Mountain Dew. Wanda perches on the very edge of Maria’s bed, hands folded in her lap, her shoulders still stiff.

“Don’t tell Natasha about this. I’m supposed to be only eating foods that will be easy on my stomach.”

Wanda smirked. “Hiding things from her already?”

“Hide and seek is a fun game.”

“Hide and seek? I’m imagining you’ll be the parent who accidentally breaks something and then makes a pact with the kids not to tell. Or who takes them somewhere fun when you’re supposed to be buying shoes. And then Natasha will go along, even though she’ll always know.”

Maria chokes on the muffin, letting the crumbs she’d been catching fall onto her as she covers her mouth. In between coughs, she drinks more of the Mountain Dew. Wanda had apparently become more than comfortable enough to joke with Commander Hill.

“Are you okay?” Wanda is frowning at her, fidgeting with the napkin in her hands.

Maria’s lungs are burning, and there’s a small tickle urging her to cough again, but she nods. She wondered if she should let it go, carry on with the act that she had choked out of nowhere and not ask Wanda what she had just said. But alternatively, Wanda had implied that she knew about whatever Natasha and her relationship is, and Maria wanted to know in great detail what Natasha had said about them. Because Natasha had to have said something; Wanda couldn’t have observed enough to come to the conclusion that they had a relationship, let alone a serious one, on her own. They were subtle in public, never touching or exchanging any telling glances. They both knew how to control the impression they put out in public. That’s kiddie stuff for them. Kiddie—that’s a big—cataclysmic—leap to make from sharing meals, even if one of them, Natasha, enjoyed surprising the other, Maria who would do the same but Natasha had told her she didn’t have a favorite food, by cooking for them, and kissing even as often as they did and the pleasure it brought Maria at least; from spending every night literally sleeping together, not any other meaning of that phrase, or hell, even the unexpected, emotional intimacy didn’t signal a serious or stable enough relationship to consider considering the fact that perhaps maybe, one day far into a future where they managed to protect the world—Thor’s reports from the rest of the universe (a phrase which now occurred in her daily work life) seemed eerie if she thought about them—they could have a life and a family together. As if either of them knew what a family was.

Silly Wanda, young enough that anything in the universe seemed possible. Except for Wanda a lot of things in the universe, like breaking people’s wills and materializing energy, might be possible. But superpowers weren’t the same as living happily ever after. Speaking of Wanda’s powers, Wanda could have overheard Natasha thinking about starting a life with Maria. Or Wanda might just miss her brother, and missing him might have triggered missing her parents, and her observation might be a product of that reminiscing.

“Have you been feeling lonely, Wanda?” Maria wanted to help if Wanda’s memories were saddening her more than usual.

Wanda blinked. “Sometimes, I guess, but not as much as I thought I would. I have people here. I made these muffins with Vizh—Vision, I mean—then I shared them with you. That’s why I thought you choked. I was going to tell you I mixed all the ingredients and baked them myself. He was just sitting on the counter watching.”

“They’re good, whoever made them.”

“When our mother baked, we would try to steal sweets when we thought she wasn’t looking. We always got caught. That was before he could speed, and I could move things with my mind.”

“My aunt told me my mother could bake. I would probably have tried to steal as well.” Maria froze. She had never expected to discuss her most painful memories with anyone—not a young woman enhanced with whatever an infinity stone is or an ex-assassin turned true hero who was also her girlfriend.

Wanda looked as if she was waiting for Maria to finish her story. There was nothing more to it—no mother, no stolen cookies, no one who would stay up with her or bring her muffins to cheer her up. Not before SHIELD, before she was pulled into this universe-saving stuff. Before Natasha.

Maria remembered when Fury had told her about Hydra, which actually surprised her given her propensity to blank out during traumatic events. Or block them out after-the-fact more accurately. If she blacked out during times of stress, she’d effectively be useless to the Avengers or Fury. If she had blacked out right when she needed to redirect the helocarriers’ targeting. Steve’s almost sacrifice would have been rendered pointless. When Fury had informed her Hydra had infiltrated SHIELD, she felt weak and light-headed. A surge of disorientation had struck her, like the aftershock of an earthquake. She had seen Fury and herself from the ceiling of the underground bunker. That image haunted her, drab colors from the dim light, Fury’s eyes on her, judging her reaction as if even that split second of disassociation was wasting precious time (it was), waiting to continue.

“I know, Maria.” Fury had been calling her Hill previously that day as usual so she could only take her first name to mean he commiserated with her shock, sadness and horror—emotions she later projected onto that moment. At that time, she was on the ceiling, freed from the gravity of distress.

Ironically, in retrospect, she’d been in meetings that morning with exactly the people who they later found out was Hydra. Had she knew even 12 hours sooner, she could have massaged the report she gave. They had interrogated—really interrogated—her, their harsh, demanding demeanor should have tipped her to something about some recent missions—two Fury had ordered but had been shut down, which never happened—again, probably a clue—the others she had been honest about. Agent Romanoff often went alone into enemy territory to get intel so their interest in that mission had confused her even then. She retrieved information that neither Natasha or she were privy to. That’s how it worked. And they wanted to about recent attempts to access classified info. Which again wasn’t that out of the ordinary. They all knew the rules but got curious. But anyway, when she went back and examined those records, she traced them to agents who were Hydra. She had had no idea during that meeting. They had out smarted her.

Maria could complete the puzzle now—over and over, fitting in the last piece and crumbling the finished puzzle into thousands of tiny pieces again. Now she had the imagine on the figurative box to guide her. Then she’d been blind-folded, feeling at the edges of pieces crafted into shapes she had no idea even existed. The grooves and sharp ridges on those pieces, the clues, still haunted her.

Fury had come to her office as she was trying to eat her lunch while comparing some agents’ reports to the official records and told her to leave in an hour, change clothes once she was out of sight and certain no one was watching her and meet him in a busy location where they could easily blend in. Those instructions he had typed into his phone and shielded with his hand as she read. Then he took a few random files from her desk, dropped some other ones into their place and left. A similar scene had happened before so she knew to expect bad news but routine bad news. Not Hydra. Not I’m going to hire some pirates to hijack our own ship to get some secrets, and by the way, you’re going to have to handle everything back at SHIELD, and they might try to kill me and maybe you too and if they do kill me, you have to save everyone and SHIELD and probably fight the lingering Nazis too, and we might need to fake my death, but right now, go back to work but come here at night because I have some programming your need to do. And don’t worry, the costumed superhero from the 1940’s will help you. He’s got a good track record against Hydra. Natasha will be involved too. They’ll know what to do. You’ll know what to when the time comes.

Why he didn’t tell her to pick up his dry cleaning as well, she’ll never know.

What happened next, Maria recalled as a blur, a kaleidoscope of gun fights, scenes of rumble and suffering set to a soundtrack of screaming, gunfire and explosions.

After Fury had given her those orders, she had returned to work somehow more focused on each individual word in the reports. She couldn’t know if this agent had written “Hail Hydra” in some secret code, if it was a cover up for the scheme that would kill them all. She didn’t see Natasha again until Fury’s “death,” which was a shame because the week on which the battle fell should have been the week the ladies of SHIELD got together, when she could have gazed over her drink at Natasha, occasionally brushing her hand against Natasha’s as they reached for an appetizer at the same time. Because she didn’t want Natasha’s tear-filled, lost eyes seared into her mind.

Maria had felt bad lying to Natasha. She never regretted or revisited missions, but Natasha’s break in composure when she asked about Fury, the slight streak of tears as she hurried past Maria through the door she had held open stabbed at her heart. However justifiable, however complicated, she had played a part in breaking Natasha’s heart. She could love Natasha as she did—hell, they could have a long life together—but that will have always happened.

After meeting Fury, Maria hadn’t returned to her own apartment. At night, she snuck to Fury’s hideout to prepare. If she slept, she slept at the desk underground. But really, she fought that whole battle sleep deprived—wishing through-out that it was a hallucination from exhaustion.

When she next stepped inside her own home, it was to decide which of her belongings—functional furniture, a few recent books, newspapers scattered about and guns—she would take with her to New York where she would move into a furnished apartment in the Avengers Tower. In the months that followed, she visited D.C frequently, but she stayed at a hotel. Her life consisted of her clothes, computers and weapons—before and after. Before SHIELD, after SHIELD. In Avengers Tower, she lived high enough that she could see the patterns of lights on the tops of the buildings below her and dim, moving lights from cars on the ground, behind walls that cut her off from the outside world.

***

“What are you working on?” Wanda was crossing and uncrossing her legs. Maria looked up, admiring the detail that had gone into the young woman’s outfit—torn jeans with grey leggings under them, a red v-neck shirt with a lace shirt beneath it and a long, open cardigan over it. It was almost more articles of clothing than Maria wore all week. Natasha was the same way, Maria observed, layers of contrasting but supposedly complimenting colors and textures. It perplexed Maria that they could have the patience to dress, how they didn’t feel like they were bound up.

“Monitoring the news, some research.” Both were regular, fairly mindless tasks for Maria.

“Everything alright?” Wanda pulls the cardigan so it closes over her chest and crosses her arms.

Maria nods. Had it not been, she’d have told Wanda it was anyway. They’d find trouble again, sooner rather than later, whether Maria searched or not. The world held its breath.

“The world is quiet.” Maria smiled. “You don’t need to worry.” She wasn’t used to protecting anyone’s feelings. On the contrary, she’d actively try to give her soldiers and agents the harsh reality. And with herself—no reality was harsh enough for what she deserved.

Maria’s phone vibrates.

“Natasha?” Wanda asks.

“Maybe.”

“I’ve been wondering about you two since we went to the mall. You were cute. I was glad too. Your joking really cut the tension.”

“Oh.” Maria remembered Wanda’s eyes lingering on her and Natasha, but back then Maria hadn’t known what to expect any more than Wanda did. Which was so much different than now.

“Did she say anything?” Maria asks.

“She smiles a more, laughs more too, I think. I asked her about you because you too are always together, and she said she was having fun. She likes you a lot, Maria, but I’m sure you know that.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry, Maria. Blame it on the fact that I never to high school so I didn’t get to spend any time on the phone with friends chatting about boys—girls in this case—or spying on their social media pages, I guess.” Wanda pulls her legs to her chest.

“I really didn’t either, not really and certainly not girls. And we didn’t have social media.” Maria winks. “But I think there’d have been other things you’d have enjoyed as well. Don’t give too much power to romance.” Maria had to give her empowering young women speech. Because she knew she, Natasha, Pepper as women in positions of power and not just tokens, eye candy or love interests were not the norm. “Have you ever thought about what you would have like to do if you weren’t a superhero?”

Wanda looks away. “Vizh and I talk about hobbies a lot. I have been telling him he should pick up one. I suggested he learn an instrument, figuring that would keep him occupied since he could master all the technical stuff, but music still takes style and other stuff that requires lots of practice and devotion to master. Vizh said my eyes sparkled when I said that, and my vocal tone elevated. He suggested perhaps I should.”

“Your eyes did get brighter when you said that.” Maria puts her hand on Wanda’s shoulder. “Have you?”

“No time.” Wanda shrugged.

“That’s an excuse, trust me. Which instrument?”

“Guitar.” Wanda left no silence between the end of Maria’s question and her response.

“You should go for it, Wanda. Natasha and I will get you whatever you need.”

“I can see why Nat thinks your special. But hey, I bet she wants to come see you too so I won’t get between you guys.” Wanda stands up and gathers what he had brought. Just as she’s about at the door, he turns around. “Do you love her?”

Maria nods before Wanda finishes the questions, before she even asked it.

***

After Wanda leaves, Maria showers, put on a clean pair of pajamas—made from a thin, soft fabric Maria particularly liked the feel of—and changed her bedding so when Natasha came, she felt lighter from being clean.

“You were working, weren’t you?” Natasha gives her a small smile.

“Nothing too strenuous.” Maria makes room for Natasha to sit in bed next to her. Her hair had not yet fully dried so she had a towel between it and her shirt.

“You seem fine so I’ll overlook it. I brought you some dinner.”

“Spaghetti?”

“Not yet”

Maria opened the container Natasha had given her. It was filled with plain, white rice. “Really, Nat?”

“Just eat it. Please.”

“Did you make it?”

“We made a whole bunch yesterday so we could make fried rice today.”

“And I get this?”

Natasha kisses Maria on her head. “I promised you a proper date, remember? You can eat all the rich foods you want then, okay?”

Maria sticks the spoon into the rice. “A date?”

“Yeah, that’s what you want, right?”

“Of course, and you want this as well?”

“It was my idea.”

“Is it what you want to… to be my girlfriend… to use that word anyway?”

“Yes, Maria. Now eat your rice and have some water. And you should go to sleep early again.”

***

Last year, Maria had used her birthday question—they kept that tradition up—to ask Fury how he had known she wasn’t with Hydra. The question of how he trusted her had never come up between them before, and it had taken at least a half dozen meetings where at least three people asked at different times “how do we know you’re not Hydra still?” before she wondered herself. To all those questions she got, she would just answer “I’m not. You know that. I’m the one who blew the helocarriers that were going to kill everyone up.” That explanation reminded everyone she had caused that destruction, but she had nothing else. In her mind, she wanted to throw out some snarky remark like ‘you wouldn’t know. This could just be another step in my plan. It’d be brilliant actually to reveal all of (a strategically planned few) Fury’s secrets to protect our real ones.” But she then realized Hydra very well could be regrouping without their awareness, benefitting from SHIELD personnel going through the ringer. More than once Maria had zoned out so completely whichever committee it was that day called her on it. Usually, she could repeat the whole script of a movie in her head though and still ramble off adequate responses to appease. She’d go back to hotels and watch movies so she could replay them in her mind the next day in the next meeting. She had survived at least—despite the trauma, the loss, the intentions of an assortment of others and her own uncertainty about whether she cared to keep living. That thought hadn’t shaken her much. At one point, she even found it amusing, thinking that no matter how low she got, she’d still be safer with weapons than without them. She’d shown up at Pepper’s apartment one evening because of those thoughts, and they had stayed up watching romantic comedies and eating ice cream. Pepper had told her to seek whatever help she needed, but she never tried to force Maria, not like Fury once had.

That was the answer he had given Maria to her question about trusting she wasn’t Hydra. After she had asked, he had sighed and said in a slow, quiet voice like a parent might use who thus far had kept a past life hidden from their child but then had to reveal the truth “I figured you’d want to know one day.”

“Remember the time I made you take time off, visit your family, see a doctor because I knew you weren’t yourself. You hated me for it, but I knew I made the right decision. You seemed so off, so sad, it would have heartless for me to not try to help. That’s why, Maria.”

Maria had stared at him through the video call, waiting for clarification. She’d once thought she didn’t suspect her because she wasn’t worth suspecting—not important or valuable enough. That’s why he had chosen her as his deputy as well; she was useless but could carry out his commands.

“When I thought about who I could trust, I remembered the pain and confusion, fear and distance in your eyes while we talked. I’d seen you carry out so many missions that required you to act contrary to the truth, and that wasn’t what you were doing then. I knew you were sincere.”

“But that didn’t cause you to stop trusting me as an agent?”

Fury had laughed. “If angst disqualified heroes, the world would be doomed. Plus, I’d had my eye on you to be my second in command, but I needed to make sure you were well enough.”

“You had the doctor you sent me to talk with evaluate me? Again.”

“Trust me, Maria, this is all a compliment. There’s a fine line between heroic and self-indulgent in this line of work, and you’re a bit more on the heroic side—you and Coulson and Romanoff too. How’d I ever end up with you all? It’s kind of gross.”

***

Maria recalled that conversation with Fury as well. Earlier in the week, she had sent another agent on a field mission she had previously planned to go on herself, but she’d been at the shooting range nearly every day the past few weeks, since she had come back to work, and lately, she had been missing more targets than she hit. Nothing had changed—same gun, same stance and years of practice—but she’d stare down the targets, aim, and the bullets would hit the black outer rings instead of the red pin prink in the center. And when the targets moved, she’d fared even worse: sometimes hitting the obstacles in the range, other times missing completely. A few days before the mission, she had hit a dummy squarely in its forehead. It had been early morning, barely after dawn, and she had shrieked. She saw blood spew from the puncture wound, the dummy collapse with a thud that rang louder than her shot. Then she’d hit the floor too still clutching her gun.

Maria hadn’t seen her father since he’d thrown her out at fourteen. He’d died of alcohol poisoning so his skin was tinted yellow from liver failure, and no makeup could cover that, or so Maria had thought. In the dim light of the rising sun seeping through the thin slits of window that lined the walls near where they meet the ceiling, the dummy had a similar glow. “You killed her,” her father’s voice said. “Why couldn’t it have been you instead?”

Since the funeral, Maria had woken up screaming every night, always right when the black sky turned to navy blue. In her dream, she had been crouching in an alley, stalking a target and reporting its every move into an ear piece. She emerged to take cover behind a newspaper box and some trash cans to continue her pursuit, but the mark had turned and now ambled toward her—a yellowish zombie with skin that oozed from its body like wet ink running off a page until all that remained was white bones only tarnished by the smoky air. “You drove me to this,” the skeleton wailed like a fog horn or the sea breeze through the cracked windows of the abandoned buildings. The figure melted right before it could touch her; its bubbling puddle smelling of booze, cigarette smoke and must.

Her aunt had advised her not to go to the funeral, to spend some time with her instead as she processed the pain his death must have unearthed. Then she begged Maria to stay with her after Maria had insisted on going. Her aunt had gone too, shadowing Maria as she floated through the viewing room and the church—really only supernaturally there that day. Her father’s friends that he had known since his days in the army had looked through her as they passed the microphone between them sharing snippets of the heroics he had performed—like running toward an armed grenade to cover a young girl. Apparently, her father had said he couldn’t have gone home and looked his young wife who dreamed of a daughter of their own in the eyes if he hadn’t. Maria honestly thought he had made up that story after her mother had died to further guilt her. He had been a grenade in her life. Then their voices turned solemn and heads bowed as they said he had gone to be with wife, the one he had loved more than anything. At that point, her aunt had yanked her from the room, whispering “the fuck is wrong these people?” Maria had to laugh at the absurdity of it all.

Maria always kept her SHIELD badge on her, but as her aunt dragged her away, she fingered it, considered dropping and grinding it into the sidewalk with her shoe. She thought she could face the funeral because she was a solider, an agent of SHIELD. She thought she could go back to work the next day because the productive stress would weaken the destructive stress. On both accounts, she’d been wrong, and she never knew if she had tried out of pride or pure masochism.

Maria had sent another agent in her place because she recognized she’d endanger the mission, her agents and civilians if she had gone. This was an issue of duty, not pride. Fury must have found out because soon after he approached her in the gym while she was staring at a punching bag she could no longer make sway.

“What the hell is going on here?” His voice was deep and loud. It was an empathetic question coming from Fury.

“Nothing, I’m fine.” Maria had tried to stand up.

Fury steadied the bag. Stopping the motion it had. “Then come at me.”

Maria shook her head. “It’s not the job I don’t know how to do anymore.”

“I generally don’t give a damn what my agents do on their own time [a blatant lie since he spied on some], but I feel the need to intervene when one of my best agents is on the brink of a mental breakdown.”

“I’m not going crazy.” She reached for the sweater she had left on the floor—the same one she still had—wanting to cover herself as best she could.

“I’ve got eyes everywhere, Maria, don’t make me embarrass you by repeating what I’ve seen.”

“So you’re going to lock me up?”

He laughed. “Of course not, but I am going to lock you out of SHIELD. I’ve got the number for a doctor who works with agents who’ve experienced trauma. She gets it. You’ll go talk about whatever is happening here.” He paused as Maria opened her mouth to object. She’d sent plenty of agents to therapy after a particularly distressing mission, but she’d gone to punch the bag or fire at targets herself. She didn’t talk. Talk was for kids and bad agents.

“You’ve got family you could stay with—supportive family?” He had to qualify that because they both knew the personal lives from which some agents had come.

Maria nodded. Her aunt had called dozens of times since the funeral, but Maria didn’t ever answer. She didn’t know how to explain to her that she knew what death felt like. Her aunt had saved her as a teenager, staunched the bleeding from the immediate wound, but now Maria was lost in a whole other traumatic world that overlapped the first. She hadn’t told her aunt about SHIELD because she had begged Maria not to join the Marines. A spy organization was on a whole other level.

Fury clears his throat to disrupt her daydreaming. She looked up at him with exactly the emotions he later credited as convincing him of her loyalty: pain from years of pricks of trauma and stress that left her dizzy and weak from figurative blood loss, confusion at how despite a decade of striving for perfection, strength and indifference, she could end up reduced to a helpless child, afraid she would never get her ability to concentrate back and of the demons that awaited her, and distant because while she was physically at SHIELD HQ, she was mentally being strangled by all these emotions pressing at her throat.

“I need you well, Maria.” Fury had actually pulled her to her feet. “Now I don’t want to see you until you can glare at me with defiance and resolve again. Coulson will get you home and the doctor’s information.”

Fury had been right. For one thing, he did need her well, and also, that experience had galvanized her sincerity to stand strong in the face of a world that would only get more weird and dangerous, that would call for more feats of tact and courage. If Hydra had come to recruit her, she’d have laughed in their face—not only because they were the bad guys but because they promised peace and security as an end, and she knew much better, a lesson she wished she could have imparted to Tony before Ultron had happened. They could only beat out fires as they emerged, maybe find an inoculation against whatever sparked the current blaze, but it would mutate, and they’d been back at square one. It was a lesson, that mutation, that she knew Natasha had learned as well. Not like two heads growing back when you cut off one but that one head, maybe scarred but clearer and more determined.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have another chapter that I am almost finished with as well, where Nat and Maria finally go on that long-awaited real date...
> 
> Also, I have at least half of the remaining chapters written, and my spring break is the week after this one so hopefully if my brain doesn't stop working, I'll be able to finish this soon.
> 
> Fun fact: Maria telling Wanda "the world is quiet" is a reference to a Series of Unfortunate Events, which I also love.
> 
> And Maria's lines about how she doesn't want to talk to family because she can't convey her emotions and how it's not the job she can't do are taken almost directly from the comic issues that made me really, really relate to and love Maria (which have thus become some of my favorite panels) and were a lot of my inspiration for writing a character-driven story about Maria's emotional life.


	13. A Win

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, much happier this chapter is : )
> 
> Also, fair warning, toward the end, things get a bit more heated between them (probably awkwardly because that isn't what I'm most comfortable writing to say the least...).

It wasn’t a black-tie affair where they strutted down the red carpet to the rhythm of the flicker of cameras like Maria had pictured, but Maria and Natasha did find themselves in nearly the front row of a concert hall watching the glint of the stage lights on the silver and brass instruments, played by humans dressed in pressed black attire.

“See, Maria, reality.” Natasha remarked, elbowing Maria in the side.

“Hah, hah,” Maria replied. As if, she thought, reality had never been this kind to her.

Natasha had kept her word—a date where Maria could eat whatever rich food she fancied, which turned out to be mozzarella sticks as an appetizer, five cheese grilled cheese and tomato soup as a main course and triple chocolate cake for dessert, and a show where they could play dress up. Although, Maria thought, they could play dress up—or the lack thereof, any time and for any reason. Her dream had reminded her that she wanted Natasha and for more than the emotional salve that seemed to draw the two women together. She needed Natasha to see her—to love her—as more than a wounded soul she must heal, protect and coddle. If Maria had nothing else, she would always have her fierce independence, so she would not have any relationship built on someone needing to take care of her. She wouldn’t have any relationship at all because of her propensity to land in an emotional state where she might need that, except she couldn’t walk away from Natasha. She’d now insist to Natasha that her past and the pain it had caused her didn’t define her—while ignoring the logical conclusion that she too is not defined her messy past and emotions. But if that didn’t define her, and SHIELD no longer could, she had no idea, beyond her current employment, what could. Natasha had suggested stand-up comedy, and while it sounded like a joke to go into the routine itself, it seemed as good a place to start as any. That was just where Maria was at this point. Perhaps they should have gone to a comedy club as opposed to a concert…

But Natasha had popped in on Maria while she was doing some early morning training—she had to make up for the days she lost to illness. Natasha had snuck up on her—or tried to anyway. Maria had been beating away at a punching bag only breaking the rhythm of the sturdy thuds to wipe drops of sweat before they stung her eyes with the fabric band around her hand. She’d smacked the bag thinking she’d hit the weights next. And that pancakes sounded nice for breakfast when she felt the floor vibrate (or she could only assume that was how she knew Natasha was coming). As Natasha reached for her—to poke or tickle her, Maria swung around and deflected her arm. As Maria re-centered herself, Natasha had poked her with her other arm, which she let slide because she was drenched with sweat anyway.

“Care to go a round, Hill.”

Maria didn’t respond but moved toward the open mats in the center of the gym, unwrapping her hands as she walked, the fabric trailing behind her.

“Want to warm up?”

“I’m always warmed up.”

“That probably not true. I’m sure you have a low resting heartrate—”

“Is that your pick-up line, Hill? Good thing I like you.” Natasha swings at her which she dodges but in a way that leaves her left side defenseless, an opportunity Natasha recognizes. Natasha strikes her side, but Maria continues as if she didn’t, going back at Natasha.

“Remember I promised you that date?”

“Is this it? I like the closet more. You were easier to touch.” Natasha dodges a punch as Maria speaks.

“It’s too early. Never start dates until sunset at least, not sunrise. Leave that time for goodnight.” Natasha dunks under a high kick and lungs toward Maria.

“Where are you taking me then?” Maria is struggling against Natasha pushing her.

“Beside the mat?”

“You’ll need a plan b if that’s you first choice.” Maria grounds herself with one leg and kicks at Natasha’s ankle from the side. As Natasha readjusts her weight in response to what amounted to a tickle, Maria thinks that she could take the mat as a date spot.

“There a fundraiser for a local art gallery. There will be an orchestra performing. It’s to benefit arts programs at school.”

“You got a soft spot for art?”

“Is that an attempt at a pick-up line? Like ‘you like art… because I am art.’ Not your best joke.”

“It was a pick-down line.” As she emphasizes “down,” she lets go of Natasha, letting her push her back and then hope forward, using Natasha’s force against her to kick Natasha who can’t block and tumbles down. She springs back to her feet with a tight backward roll almost instantly and punches at Maria, which lands because Maria was watching the blur of red and black.

“What do you say?” Natasha catches Maria’s arm as she swings, holding her in place to keep their eyes on one another.

“You’ll wear the black dress?” Maria meant to say that with a cocked eyebrow, but she was also trying to escape Natasha’s grasp so it came out as more of a command, not a coy, inside joke. Natasha pushes harder in response.

“Props for voicing your wants. I’ll take that as a maybe. I’ll have to think of a way to sweeten the deal more.” Natasha then overpowers Maria who falls backward onto the mat. Maria blinks, conscious that she had fallen but more conscious that Natasha was now standing over her, wearing yoga pants and a swoop-neck, sleeveless shirt that had rolled halfway up her stomach in the fray.

Remember, Mar, girlfriend or not, I’ll never let you win.” Natasha sits on the ground beside Maria.

“Only if we play fair.” Maria straddles Natasha, her hands resting on the exposed skin of Natasha’s stomach.

“Courtesy of the guy our dear captain is scouring the globe for.” Natasha said as Maria grazed the scar tissue.

“The once deadly make the best friends.” Maria eases Natasha onto her back on the mat. “And lovers.” She kisses Natasha, nibbling at her lip and tracing her tongue along Natasha’s lips. Natasha puts her hands behind Maria’s head and tugs at her hair. It comes out of the bun and falls so it forms a barrier between their faces and the world. Natasha slides her hands up Maria’s back.

“Natasha,” Maria moans. Natasha’s hands rest under Maria’s bra. Maria breathes slowly, focusing on Natasha’s touch. She kisses Natasha along her jaw line before tucking her head between Natasha’s chin and shoulder.

Maria would slowly peel off the rest of Natasha’s shirt and her athletic bra then and there in the open space of the mats that line the floor of the high ceiled gym, regardless of the unlocked doors, the windows that made up the top half of the outside wall and the other activities that went on there. In fact, it felt right, poetic—after a life in the shadows, disguise and silence. She studies Natasha’s eyes, arms and mouth for signs of objections, but Natasha just lays under her hands, eyes on Maria, mouth agape.

Then there is the slam of a door, a single set of footsteps and a woman’s giggling. “Vizh, you can’t just phase through doors, just because you can. The people inside might want privacy if the door is closed. If I did stuff just because I could, I’d never need to talk because I could just read everyone’s mind.”

“I do not believe you can read my mind, Wanda.”

Maria scrambles off Natasha but ends up rolling onto her own back beside her. Natasha simply sits up and doesn’t even pull her shirt over her stomach. Wanda is beaming as if she had played match-maker and now finally got to witness the glorious result of her work. But Wanda hadn’t played match-maker, Maria thinks; she made a lucky guess based off—maybe not actually that—scant of evidence.

“Would this constitute such a violation of privacy?”

“Nope! I mean, yes, of course, but also no. We all need some good news, right?”

Natasha nodded, smiling herself now. “We needed a win—a pure victory.”

Maria thought they should rescue baby animals or walk people home at night if they wanted a pure win.

“I’m…” Maria starts but covers her mouth. She had sat up as well so she could at the others.

Natasha slaps her on the back. “We were just planning our first real date off this compound.”

So that’s what was going on here, Maria realizes. She been a bit baffled up until that point. Apparently, she had spent too much time in the military setting that she no longer knew the scripts for casual social interactions.

“We were sparring too. Maria managed to knock me down.”

Maria was glad she couldn’t see her facial expressions and the embarrassment the varying manifestations of her shock and discomfort they must be expressing. She had done what now? Actually, the sparring and her brief triumph over Natasha had happened.

“I have been told that practice makes perfect,” Vision said. “I have been helping Wanda learn to fly.”

Wanda looks at her feet. “It’s more like hovering than flying.”

“The definition of flying is—”

“To soar through the air, gliding above all the world below.” Natasha interrupts Vision, directing those words at Maria, who she gives a tilted grin and a nod of the head to when she’s done talking.

“It’s liberating.” Wanda materializes red energy from her palms, lifting herself off the ground, her hair waving behind her.

“Wait,” Maria says as she rubs at her forehead, “can we go back to when Vision implied that I am not already perfect.”

Wanda has to land because while laughing she couldn’t maintain the focus she needed to fly. She’d been teetering in the air.

“Ouch, Mar’s got a point, Vision. Remind me to tell you about the tight ship Maria ran at SHIELD.”

“I have read all I could about the defunct SHIELD. I did not mean to insult Ms. Hill, only to encourage her.”

Maria couldn’t make eye contact with any of them. She’d been teasing them. Vision’s remark hadn’t hurt her. It was true. Practice did make perfect—for individuals seeking to sharpen their skills, superhero teams wanting to save the world without as much collateral damage and hurt people easing toward finding and trusting a family. Maria works up the guts to peer at Natasha through the corner of her eyes. She’s staring down Vision, who’s darting his eyes, trying not to stare back, maybe searching the internet for what to do in this situation.

“Flying is also handy,” Natasha breaks her gaze and the silence. “I had to fight the Ultron-bots with a bulldozer.”

“If I recall footage of your battle in New York, I believe you were able to reach the top of the then Stark Tower without using stairs or an elevator like a human who cannot fly would have to do. That could constitute flying.”

If Maria had been Vision, she would have stayed out of the conversation for a while, until more of the awkwardness had faded, but to his credit, he did do encouragement better that time. Practice makes perfect, indeed.

“Didn’t Cap shoot you into the air where you jumped onto a series of alien ships where you fought them and stole their ship?” Wanda asks. Wanda had missed the Avenger’s first major battle. Probably for the better—Maria wondered if the young woman would have been the legal age to consent to battle aliens pouring out of a worm hole above New York.

“Maybe?” Natasha squints. “I do a lot of things, but yeah, that sounds like something I would do.”

“I think that’s as good as flying. Precisely because you can’t fly. You could have gone splat.”

Natasha considers Wanda’s opinion, shaking her head back and forth. Maria remains silent. She could fly on the helocarriers. They were her airspace. She snorts, drawing their attention to her. “Funny how I recall it was the helocarrier that got everyone off Sokovia.”

Natasha smiles at Maria, taking her hand. Months ago, Natasha had told her that her non-superheroing mattered too. They all gave what they could.

“We have a winner,” Natasha winks at Maria, and Maria thinks that maybe Wanda had had a point. Maybe she could use a win that wasn’t predicated on any losses.

“See,” Natasha says as Wanda and Vision go to practice flying in another part of the gym. “Our teammates will accept us.”

Maria chews at her lip, trying to decide if she could imagine Sam fist bumping her, Steve putting an arm around her shoulders and lecturing her on how she better not hurt a single hair on Natasha’s head. And then there was Pepper who knew about Maria’s crush but not specifically that it was Natasha or that they had gotten together, bringing much relief and joy to Maria. She would probably like to know that since she had been supportive of Maria during her struggle. Maria figured Fury would scrutinize them, looking back and forth with a face filled with concentration and thought and then laugh a deep, belly laugh—a pleased mentor whose two protégées found each other.

***

Maria had agonized over what to wear on this date far more than she had ever previously fretted over clothing. She had dresses and skirts that she never gave a second thought to wearing to work. To even consider wearing the tailored, whatever-expensive-material pants suit she owned hadn’t made sense to her, a sentiment she figured Pepper shared, as if they could weaponize their femininity against the jeers and rolled eyes they encountered. Once, she had worn pants to a hearing with Congress, but as she had told Pepper that night, Congress was the worst and didn’t deserve her best attire.

But a date with Natasha wasn’t a battle ground like work. In her feverish ramblings, she had worn a tuxedo, and Natasha in real life had okay’ed it. Yet, the certainty that wearing a tuxedo would make her the most comfortable eluded her. To a lesser degree, she understood what Natasha had said about her body never before being her own: her choice of dress hadn’t been hero own so she never developed tastes or determined her comfort zone. Back as a kid, it had been shirts and pants her father had grabbed—probably without even looking at them—from the thrift store, size and gender be damned. She’d had some respite from that with her aunt, but that was before the military and SHIELD where it had been her uniform or a dress. Which brought her to that moment where she was going through the hangers in her closet.

Natasha would wear the black dress—if only to tease Maria. The actual formality of the event Natasha wouldn’t care about; she could focus only on her date, unlike Maria who self-consciousness and concern for the thoughts of others plagued. It was Maria whose palms were sweating as she avoided catching her reflection in the mirror.

After going through and considering each potential outfit and laying her head against the closet’s doorframe, she picks up her phone to text Natasha.

“Were you serious about the tuxedo?”

“Were you?”

Maria frowned. That exchange wasn’t illuminating; it had already happened in her head.

“Maria, you don’t own a tuxedo. Close your eyes and pick a dress at random. You’ll be stunning no matter what you choose.” Then a second text: “Hell, you’d be perfect without any clothes.” The semi-colon open-parentheses made Maria want to leap across her room.

Ultimately, Maria didn’t choose at random though. She remembered at a company party once, she had worn a dark blue sleeveless dress that had made her smile at herself when she caught a glimpse. The moment had almost been ruined by Tony though, who had been examining the science projects of one of the kids the party was benefiting, but grinned and waved at her when she and Pepper walked by. Pepper had stomped on Tony’s foot, in front of the kid, and then taken Maria’s arm and whispered “don’t mind him, but that dress does make your eyes even bluer.” Maria remembered getting flushed and thinking that Pepper’s hair always made her eyes pop, but she had willed herself to not dwell on that observation.

Maria changed from her pajama shorts and undershirt into the dress. After she had zipped it, she runs her hands down her silhouette, smoothing the material. She slips on a red, large-beaded bracelet and plain red heels and took a soft, sheer shawl before going to meet Natasha—who was not wearing the black dress. Natasha laughs when she sees Maria’s pouting face.

“You do know that black dress doesn’t exist. You dreamed it up. I’m sure if we go shopping we can find a similar one though.”

Maria shrugs. Natasha is Natasha. Who could at once smile so as to seduce one into bed where she’d promptly suck out their soul (or steal your heart, in Maria’s case), and like she was welcoming you home after a difficult day, inviting you to lay your head across her lap and open your heart.

Natasha throws the keys to her car to Maria, jogging her back to the present. “You drive.” Natasha threads her arm through Maria’s, who is still stunned, and albeit drags her outside, both their heels clicking in rhythm—Natasha’s right foot, Maria’s left…

While there hadn’t been a red carpet, a valet or news cameras awaiting them, there had been hands to shake. It only occurred to Maria that they were holding hands in public when Natasha had to remove her hand to greet a fan. There was pinkish champagne with a cherry dropped in and chocolate-covered strawberries to distract Maria from that thought.

When Maria and Natasha take their seats in the velvety chairs near the front, Natasha throws her arm around Maria’s shoulder and takes a selfie before Maria could even consciously smile (or cover her face).

“Aw, a candid shot of Maria.” Natasha says in a voice usually reserved for appreciating puppies or kittens. Maria snatches the phone and sees that she did look… not stiff, not quite whimsical either but getting there. And she was smiling. In a way that involved her whole face, brightening her eyes, her hair and the subtle touches of makeup she wore.

“I’m surprised there isn’t a crimp in your hair.” Natasha fluffs the back of Maria’s hair.

“Stop.” Maria touches Natasha’s hand, frowning.

Natasha moves her hand to Maria’s exposed thigh rubbing it, which makes Maria bite the corner of her lip. “You’re so pretty, Maria. I don’t think you realize that.”

Natasha’s thinking was correct. Maria didn’t even know what realizing how pretty she is would look like.

“What are you thinking?”

“That you should move your hand up?” Maria glances at Natasha, who just grinned.

“I didn’t rent this place out.”

Maria shrugged. As if that had any relevance at the moment. This she didn’t say but placed her hand on Natasha’s leg, an inch higher up the thigh than Natasha’s hand.

“I’d have liked to have been an artist had not been for the assassin-training thing and had my parents had the resources to send me to classes, that is. Funny thing, though, I was introduced to ballet through that assassin-training thing. I might not have been otherwise.”

“A dancer? I’d have guessed a therapist…”

“Oh, are you still on that? You’re being sarcastic because you know I’m right.”

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have changed the subject. Go on.”

“There wasn’t anything more anyway… just an observation.” The lights in the theatre dim, and the stage illuminates with the discordant sound of the musicians tuning their instruments in the background.

Maria watched Natasha watch the conductor come onstage, listening to the hollow footsteps, a crisp voice and the sound she ushered in—sudden, yet expected, melodic but still consuming, like a breeze that rushes in when the door is opened, rustling everything inside. Natasha’s mouth tightened. She squeezes Maria’s thigh.

***

Maria and Natasha end up at a bar a few blocks off the street with the theatre, which was bright as dusk, albeit artificially, with strings of colorful, round bulbs strung over the street from one building to another. The street with the bar and other building that were either abandoned at night or always was dark except for the yellow “open” sign in the bar’s window. After they had left the theatre, they had wandered without exchanging any words or glances. Maria was energized from the show as if she were a windup toy whose lever the musicians had turned and now needed to amble off in whichever direction she faced, and Natasha seemed vacant to Maria with wide eyes and a loose grip on her hand. One advantage of being them was they could walk outside at night on unlit streets, in heels, without fear of dangerous people—even though Maria hadn’t brought a gun (Natasha might had, even Maria hadn’t asked over wine if Natasha had stashed a weapon somewhere for their date.)

Maria had pushed open the bar’s dirty yellow and orange pseudo-stained glass door decorated with the pattern of raindrops in some stage of rotation. When they entered, the bar keep looked up, blinked a few times in their direction and returned to re-arranging some bottles, as if he watched eccentric people stroll in all the time, which he probably did, Maria thought. There existed in the world more than just the Avenger’s brand of weirdness.

Maria leads Natasha to a wooden stool by the bar, goes to help Natasha up, but Natasha swats and glares at her and hops up by herself. Maria smiles, straightening her shawl on Natasha’s shoulders. She had placed it around her girlfriend’s shoulders as they were walking. It was well into fall, and while not as cold or windy as it could be, it was still chilly and neither had brought a coat. Maria ordered vodka for Natasha figuring that she was lost in mourning her past and a life that hadn’t been. For the sake of continuity of nostalgia, Maria orders a strong cider. In high school, Maria and her best friend had perched on the roof of her aunt’s house and drank cider, mostly apple though which had more sugar than alcohol. Her aunt had known but had told Maria that she looked the other way so the otherwise rule-abiding Maria would have at least one story of youthful adventure. People had been teasing Maria about her strict adherence to rules for far longer than she had known either Fury or Natasha.

Natasha sips at the vodka, drinking more than she maybe should in a few gulps. Maria scans the bar room while Natasha drinks, waiting for her to set the glass on the counter, not wanting to stare at her while she drinks. It’s chipped and faded wooden tables with chairs at varying degrees of pushed in surrounded by plastic panels in the pattern of wood decorated with decommissioned street signs. Natasha places her hand on top of Maria’s—to silence the patter the tapping of her fingertips had made. Maria took a deep breath as if she were about to begin a long speech or dive into a nerve-racking task. She had a nerve-racking speech she’d like to make, but she wouldn’t tell Natasha now. Not when Natasha was hurting, where there was the possibility it could come off as only her response to Natasha’s pain.

Maria pulls her hand from under Natasha’s and cups them around her chin, warm but Natasha had just finished the vodka.

“This sucks, Nat. This really fuckin’ sucks.

A grin breaks across Natasha’s pained expression. “Did Commander Hill just say ‘sucks’?”

Maria shrugs. “I didn’t know what else to say.” Honestly, she hadn’t so she had gone with a unspoken yet ever-present truth.

“I don’t know. I have grown fond of depressive introspection.” Natasha raises an eyebrow.

“Seriously? I can’t tell if you’re joking…”

“Is there a difference?”

“Nat, let’s not… Not now anyway.” Maria rubs her thumb over Natasha’s cheek. “I mean this will be there tomorrow, the day after…”

“Always.”

“Well, yeah, probably. To some extent. So why dwell now?”

“I see your logic but will raise you: why not?”

Maria failed to see the logic in Natasha’s counter. “Because you’re gorgeous in that white dress. And we’re out on a date, and there’s a dart board over there.” Because you pushed me when I wanted to curl up and shut down. Because I love you, and I want to see you smile and laugh yourself. And maybe it isn’t fair for me to ask you to laugh when I know you want to cry, when you watched a life you longed for unfold, but I am. Maria thinks this as she holds Natasha’s face and peers into her eyes.

“Darts, Hill?”

“Darts.” Maria finishes the cider and slams the cup on the bar. She leads Natasha by the hand to the dart board on the back wall. They weren’t alone in the bar; three men gathered around a pool table, and a few groups gathered at tables. The men had looked up as they passed; Maria had peeked to see if they had. She squeezes Natasha’s hand, wishing they could have a bubble around them so she could ensure Natasha and her pleasure stayed within their own lives.

Natasha picks up a blue dart and flips it about a foot in the air, and then catches it by its plastic feathers when it comes down. As Maria lines the red darts on the table, Natasha takes three of them and begins juggling them. She doesn’t drop any or poke herself as she catches them, not until Maria snatches one as it arcs from one hand to the other anyway. Maria imagined Natasha could have caught the next dart and resumed her rhythm despite Maria’s interference, but she shifts her focus to trying to catch Maria’s hand, and the darts fall.

“Show-off. We get it, you’re multi-talented.” Maria stretches the arm with dart as far as she can, out of Natasha’s reach. Natasha jumps for it, but her arm doesn’t even come close—Maria thinks Natasha could probably jump higher. As Natasha hits the ground, her heels clomp, but she doesn’t stagger.

“So close.” Maria stretches the “o” in “so,” teasing Natasha by moving the dart closer before whipping her hand up again.

Finally, Maria rests the dart atop Natasha’s head and takes a step back to admire her work. Natasha pouts at Maria and crosses her arms over her chest, looking to Maria as impossible to resist as it had been for Natasha to snatch the dart. Before Natasha could move, Maria glides to her, wraps her arms around her waist and kisses her mouth. Natasha places her hands on Maria’s bare shoulder and her head against her chest, positioning herself as if they were about to begin a slow dance.

“I thought we were going to play darts?” Natasha whispers.

“We are.” Maria sways from side-to-side, adjusting her hands on Natasha so she both hugs her closer and can feel more of Natasha’s skin, albeit through fabric. Her hand touches the zipper, reminding her how in her fever dream, she had watched the dress slip down Natasha, and she curses that while they might get to act like they rule the world, there were actually other people in it.

“I have to pee.” Natasha whispers as she nibbles at Maria lower lip. Wide-eyes, Maria watches Natasha stride toward the doors in the back. When she opens the door, she twirls around and beckons for Maria with her finger. Maria had wanted to follow from the start, but her legs wouldn’t move, like her heels had become staked into the floor. She’d slip out of her shoes and run bare foot to Natasha though. She felt flushed and shivered, scratched her hands on the fabric of her dress. Then she feels Natasha’s hand on her back, leading her inside and hears the door shut behind them.

Maria and Natasha are alone in the dilapidated restroom. The mirror over the sink had cracked in the upper right corner with dirt gathered in the groove, and the glass was foggy as if something had been smeared over it.

“You know we’re not on a field mission, we don’t need to be in a bathroom in a nowhere bar.”

“Don’t we though, Maria?”

There’s two stalls, but one is missing its door. They go into the other stall, Maria feeling the cracked tile as she walks and her heel wobbles. Inside, they huddle close to the door to avoid the toilet.

“No, we don’t. I’m sure you’ve been in some weird, gross places so why repeat that?”

Natasha bows her head, but Maria puts her thumb under her chin and brings her head up so they make eye contact again. Natasha has her eyes closed.

“Can I pull your hair back?” Maria asks.

Natasha’s eyes open so she can look at Maria curiously.

“Your hair… you never tie it back. Can I?”

“…If you want.”

Maria combs her fingers through Natasha’s loose curls. They’re more stiff than smooth from a coating of hairspray. She massages her neck, pinching her skin starting at the hair line, and Natasha inhales, her head tilting back toward Maria’s hand. Maria then pulls Natasha’s hair together and secures it with the band she keeps on her wrist under the bracelets. Natasha runs her hand over her own hair, before getting on her toes and kissing Maria on the cheek. Maria turns her head so her lips brush against Natasha’s and anchors her hands on the chipped, pale yellow door. As Maria kisses her, Natasha fiddles with the lock, undoing it so Maria’s weight opens it. They both stumble as Maria loses her balance and falls into Natasha but manages to catch as she regains her balance.

On their way out, Maria picks up a dart again, grips it like she would a pencil and throws it at the board. It not only hits the other ring but bounces off without even pricking it. She throws another, and this one strikes just above where the first had hit, sticking into the board for a moment before sagging and finally falling. Shaking her head, Natasha drags her away.

***

They’re driving home on an open stretch of road, no other cars in sight and only periodic street lights. Inside the car, the air is warm from the heat, but Maria can feel cold radiating from the windows. She’s driving again, and beside her Natasha had taken off her shoes and stretched her legs as far as they would go. Neither had spoken since they had gotten on the road. Maria wondered if Natasha had drifted off—Maria’s shawl still wrapped around her and her hair still tied back—but didn’t wonder enough to ruin the silence.

Maria knew from experience that Natasha tended not to speak before or after missions—her time with Clint, which was always a hoot, the exception. Countless times, she had seen Natasha sit without even a twitch, often with her hands on her legs, back bent forward, gazing downward. She had wondered if Natasha was replaying the details and objectives, planning the most effective strategies, a solution for every scenario, or if she was blocking the mission from her mind to not overwhelm herself and was thinking about something altogether random. When she first observed Natasha, she had brainstormed what random thoughts she might have, which conversations Natasha might be dwelling on, wishing she had spoken differently in only to find the right reply then, which television series Natasha might be speculating about, what she needed from the store that she repeated so she wouldn’t forget.

Natasha squeezes Maria leg. “Are you trying not to fall asleep?”

“No, why? Were you watching me drive? I thought you were sleeping.”

“I wouldn’t need to see you to sense if you were sleeping. It’s just you were looking ahead like if you blinked, the road would succeed in lulling you to sleep.” She moves her hand to Maria’s face. “And of course, I was watching you. You’re most beautiful when you’re concentrating. It’s the thing that makes you glow—your thing. No, I take that back. It’s when you are the second most beautiful. The first is when you’re funny… and when you have an unforced smile. Like now.”

Maria covers her mouth with her hand, as if she could feel her expression. Instead her fingers brush against Natasha, who takes her hand and holds it so its rests on Maria’s chest.

“I’m not sure I know what beautiful means…”

Natasha snorts with laughter. “I’m not sure if that is deflection or honest uncertainty.”

Maria quickly looks to Natasha with a tightened mouth and furrowed brows.

“Okay, your tone of voice suggested it was sincere. But if you think I know any more than you do…”

“But you must, if you’re so certain I am.”

Natasha rests her head against her hand, thinking. “For the record, if I recall correctly, you called me gorgeous earlier,” she grumbles.

Maria puts her other hand back on the wheel and fixes her eyes on the yellow line illuminated by their headlights.

“Maria,” Natasha says melodically, her tone rising and falling as she says the single word. Maria grips the wheel, instinctively coming to attention at the sound of her name, searching for threats on the road ahead. “You’re doing it again—being adorable.”

Maria shrugs, tilts her head and smiles at Natasha, who is grinning as well—wide, the way she does after laughing.

“What makes you smile, I guess,” Maria says, leaving it at that, assuming Natasha will know that she means to answer her own question about beauty. Natasha nods in agreement, and Maria realizes Natasha is leaning forward with her hands resting on her legs, in the same position she had sat in before missions. Except now Natasha is grinning. Maria can see her bright eyes and smile as they pass under a light. They’re driving through the small town to which the compound is closet.

Maria again pictures past Natasha before missions trying to remember if she had smiled at Natasha, if there had been any embarrassing moments when another agent who Maria would then have to assign to the most boring work, asked about the goofy grin she was giving the monitor.

“Hey, Natasha, before missions—what do you think about?”

“Plan of attack, potential obstacles, mission stuff.” Natasha answers with no hesitation.

“So not beating yourself up for going to three different stores and still forgetting salt?”

“Hah! No… I save those thoughts for while I am fighting. Seriously.” Natasha’s laughter morphs into a frown. “Those thoughts…” She sighs. “…We take them for granted, while for so long I considered it a luxury to go off on a mission not wondering whether I could actually kill my best friend, knowing full well that I would.”

Natasha stomps at the car’s rug, shaking the whole vehicle. “What sadistic fuckery is that?”

“Sorry, I brought it up.”

“No, no, Maria, don’t ever apologize… I love you.”

“Natasha?”

“Maria, I said I love you. You know you heard me. We’ve been talking at the same volume the whole time without any misunderstanding.” There’s a firmness, almost defensive, to her voice.

“I didn’t think you liked me as much as I like you.” Maria blurts this, blurring her words together.

“That’s because poor Maria doesn’t think anyone could love or value her. Thus, my ongoing, correct observation of your mental state.”

As Maria pulls down the compound’s drive, she breaks into a laughter that brings tears to her eyes. She’s shaking so much she jerks the car, not able to break and accelerate smoothly. Natasha puts her hand on the wheel—in case she needed to stop them from swerving into the grass because of Maria’s laughter.

Maria wipes tears from her eyes, blinking until her vision clears. To think she had thought earlier she could engineer the atmosphere when that word entered their lives. She pulls through the door which had opened for their car and maneuvers into their parking spot amidst the vast assortment of other vehicles. Putting the car into park, she turns to Natasha and winks. “I love you too, Nat.”

They exchange a grin and slip out of the car.

***

It’s the early morning hours and contrary to their usual routine, Maria and Natasha are not asleep. A few rounds ago, they’d kicked the sheets from Maria’s bed, and now Natasha is lying naked on Maria, who had wrapped her arms around her to keep her where they can have maximal skin contact. Natasha keeps her hands cupped around Maria’s breasts, rubbing her hardened nipple with her thumb. Maria, back slightly arched and right leg twitching, kisses Natasha harder, only stopping her tongue to moan at Natasha’s touch.

It had happened almost like Maria imagined. She had cast the shawl aside and yanked down the zipper of Natasha’s dress. It hadn’t just slipped off, but Natasha tugged it down, then reached around to Maria’s zipper. It had gotten stuck on Maria’s bra. Maria reaches around to unhook it, but Natasha beats her to it. No sooner does she slide the dress off Maria’s body, taking her bra with it, does Maria pull her close and kiss her, unhooking Natasha’s bra. They embrace for a moment, and then Maria picks up Natasha, who wraps her legs around the other woman’s waist. On the bed, Natasha had laid Maria on her back kissing her on the mouth before starting down her body, her hands fidgeting with Natasha’s panties.

“Tasha?” Maria is attempting to catch her breath. Earlier while gripping Natasha’s hair—which she had pulled loose again—she had shrieked Natasha, but her voice had cracked at the “nah,” and it came out “Tasha.”

Natasha moans in acknowledgement, her warm breath tingling at Maria’s neck.

“I love you.” Somewhere between the laughter and emotional and physical intimacy, Maria reasoned they’d have enough going for them that she could scream it.

Natasha sits up so she is straddling Maria’s hips. “I love you too. But you know that because I said it first.”

“This is going to become a thing, right?”

“How can I not make the fact that the Black Widow beat her girlfriend to saying ‘I love you’ into a thing?” Natasha’s hand creeps down Maria’s stomach.

“I was thinking it first! I swear I was!”

“You have nooo idea when I first felt love for you.”

“Okay, when? Proof or it didn’t happen.”

“Like I always say ‘no one will ever know my full story.’” Natasha sticks three fingers into Maria, having caught on by that point to what drives Maria the craziest.

“Well, I knew you existed first.”

“Come on, Maria, do you really think I didn’t have as much intel on SHIELD as you guys had on me. That’s just rude.”

“Fine, I’m older than you. Therefore—”

Maria claws at the sheet as Natasha fingers a particularly sensitive spot. She screams until her voice cracks again and Natasha collapses on her. She could never scream loud enough, grip the sheets tight enough, hug Natasha close enough. It hit her like she was drowning—the same warmth, light-headedness, desperation—except Natasha was holding her, and Natasha could breathe underwater.

They lay on their backs gasping for air, Maria waiting for the world to stop spinning and the black spots to fade from her visions. Natasha pokes her in the side.

“Get your blanket. I am exhausted now.”

Maria is crawling across the bed to gather the bedding that bunched on the floor when a pillow hits her from behind. She flops onto her stomach, arms dangling over the bed’s edge. Without looking, Maria hurls it back at Natasha, but it soars over her and hits the floor a foot from the bed.

“You have horrible aim, Maria. How are you so good a shot? I’ve seen you shoot people in the hand, to disable them, without turning your head.”

“Aren’t we full of contradictions, though?” Maria drags the blanket onto the bed and tosses it over them. She lays down, but her head falls to the empty sheet. “That was my pillow?”

“Well, yeah… My head was on mine.”

Maria sits up, but Natasha grabs her arms. She hops off the bed, grabs the pillow and pats in back into place. She then guides Maria so she is laying down again and slides the pillows under her head—before cuddling close to her.

Maria hugs Natasha. “Turns out there was something that could make our conversations even better…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *shows themself out*
> 
> The chapter that comes directly after this is the one I am most struggling with--so I will probably write everything else first.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	14. Obstacles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And... finally, I can update again. I think I mentioned I was having trouble starting this chapter.
> 
> I had to introduce a little bit of drama here...

On screen, Lego Luke exploded into a flurry of tiny blocks. An empire ship was firing at her from above, and Maria had no idea how to climb up high enough to slice it with the lightsaber so even as Luke re-materialized, more blocky gun blasts hit him. Once upon a time, Maria hadn’t been a button-masher. She had mastered the timing and patterns to dodge or deflect enemy attacks at the arcade while playing the fighting games with the joysticks with the round, red tops and a few other buttons beside it that made a clicking sound when she pressed them quickly, where Maria had entered her name when she reached the first spot on the record board as “MAR” because she hadn’t been the most creative kid. But then again, once upon a time, she had thought she had loved Natasha so maybe she didn’t have the best judgement either. Lego Luke explodes again as Maria had run right over a bomb that a ship had planted.

A few seconds pass before Maria reappeared so she could jump around swinging the lightsaber again. She had originally had zero intent to have a relationship with anyone, let alone with Natasha. Because she could never succumb someone she cared about to a lifetime of her emotional distance and her depressive, destructive behavior. But apparently, Natasha didn’t have that concern. She would succumb anyone to anything to reach her goal—like the empire in Star Wars who vaporized a few planets who got in their way. Maria was those planets in that analogy, and she hadn’t even been playing this game that long. She had wanted to play a shooting game—well, she had most wanted to shoot her actual gun at some targets, but she remembered the sinking feeling when she had when she kept missing the mark and couldn’t bring herself to risk that disgust again. And she had sense enough to know not touch her gun when she really, really wanted to shoot something. So she was playing Lego Star Wars, which she had spotted resting on the television stand where Steve and friends had probably left it the time Maria and Natasha had had to hide in the closet. Maria hated the game because no matter how badly she did, she never lost. She just regenerated.

Either Natasha or her—whoever it had been who had joked it—had been right: Vision could be a blabbermouth. Although really, he was probably practicing conversation skills—small talk, which Maria always knew she hated. Sometime down the line, Wanda must have told him if you want to connect with someone, ask them about their interests—although, maybe Wanda should have qualified that by advising him to be cautious of sensitive subjects so you don’t bring up anything problematic. In this case, that problem was Banner. More specifically, all this time since Sokovia, Natasha had been devastated that he chose to cloak the Quinjet and flee to who knows where. Natasha didn’t know where anyway—despite months of searching. And everyone else knew about this desire of Natasha’s—except Maria, who had thought she was the one closest to her.

Maria only had herself to blame. Like with Hydra. It was another instance of missing data, failing to trace the intel to its logical conclusion. It was sloppy work—the kind that she would demote her agents for. Her first memory of reuniting with Natasha after the year she disappeared was Natasha behind the bar—red hair curled, wearing a silky white and black dress—mixing drinks with Banner sitting across from her.

In retrospect, the site of Natasha had disarmed her. As Maria was getting dressed, picking which necklace she wanted to wear with her red dress, the thought had crossed her mind that Natasha would be at the party. After all, Natasha was one of the Avengers that Maria had only recently personally called in. Maria had seen the footage of the battle to reclaim Loki’s staff. She’d seen Natasha. But when she had spotted Natasha in person even across the crowded, dimmed room, she had stopped—suddenly aware of how loud the chatter and the other background noise was. It left her feeling exposed. Then Steve had greeted her, and Maria didn’t have the time to scrutinize Natasha’s interactions. Had she had, Maria could have looked for signs of Bruce’s awkwardness that suggested romantic interest, his fidgeting, stammering and look of confusion, or Natasha’s smirk, her smooth movement and flirty voice. But it wouldn’t have been her business anyway, especially then. Natasha had no commitment to her. Hell, any relationship they’d have would come as equally out of nowhere as her feelings for Banner. That’s who Natasha is after all, capable of leveraging any and all resources to get what she wanted. For insistence, a boyfriend then and apparently, a girlfriend now. Maria wondered if Natasha had really been lying when she had told her that she had never had the chance to consider her own sexuality.

While ruminating, Maria had stumbled upon an elevator that took her into range of the hostile ships. She had had to switch characters to activate it. Luke didn’t have the necessary skills. Now she was using Chewie’s bow gun to ground her enemies. But far from celebrating that in-game success, she was well aware that she could only progress so far before hitting another switch or lever she couldn’t figure out how to trigger. The game was literal child’s play, and she had already died as many times as she had almost died in real life.

The Avengers (and her) had been gathered in the lounge after a long day of team training—so essentially, it had been a typical day. Maybe it was her own restless mind, but she sensed more hustle in the team, heightened senses. They definitely trained more, which meant she saw Natasha less during the day, but she’d swoop by Maria’s room in the evening, and they had fun so Maria went with it. Going with it was sort of their thing.

From where she sat now, Maria wondered if Natasha had been sneaking off during the day to follow any leads on Banner. Or write love letters to him, which she’d incinerate with her Widow’s Bites as soon as she had signed her name. “Dear My Darling Hulk, Please come home. Our compound and my heart are empty without your touch to warm my soul. Love, Natasha. P.s. Don’t worry, I’ve been keeping in practice with the help of some poor, unsuspecting fool.”

Maria might add to that letter that the compound was empty without the threat of Banner losing control and smashing their new, high-tech facility and hurting anyone in his path—except Natasha. From what Maria had been able to pull from the others, Natasha’s touch could calm the Hulk’s rage—by reaching her proportionately tiny palm to him. As his massive, green fingers sent sparks through Natasha’s body, the anger and energy drained from him. It was the type of shit you’d find in fairy tales: pretty lady kisses the misguided monster because only she could see his gentleness and reach his tender soul, bringing him back from the brink. Or, the Black Widow—who in all fairness should be devouring her mate—sooths the soul of the sad, tormented nerd—who is also a super-strong gamma beast. Same difference, same ridiculous crap.

Maria knew she was bitter. And hypocritical. In the past, she hadn’t always been completely honest with all the women she had slept with. She had used some people to get what she wanted without any future responsibilities. Like Natasha. Except with Natasha, until recently, it had been everything but that. Their relationship was different—as they always seem to be in the moment. Despite knowing Natasha had feelings for another person, Maria still wanted to be her favorite.

As she had expected, Maria encountered a collapsed metal pathway she had to cross to move forward in the level. She jumped across the gulf, because maybe something was built into the game for her to bounce off and leap to the other side. But the character disappeared and re-materialized on the edge from which she had jumped, however many Lego pieces poorer. She made the character retrace his steps running against the wall so if there were any switches or things to shoot, they would activate. But nothing.

Then Natasha slips on the sofa next to Maria, having snuck in while Lego Star Wars had distracted Maria—not that Maria had to be distracted for Natasha to sneak up on her, literally or figuratively.

“Hey, I thought we were going to play that together.”

That was not Natasha’s best opening move, Maria thought. She had easily set up Maria to spike the figurative ball at her with a rebuttal like ‘hey, I thought we were in a relationship’ (which really wouldn’t have been Maria best follow-up either). But Maria just glares at Natasha, her face as unamused with Natasha as she was with the game. She turns back to the screen and hits the buttons to jump, because she could.

“Talk to me, Maria.”

“Go away. Work has me stressed enough. I don’t need people making it worse.”

“I wouldn’t have ambushed you if you had picked up your phone.”

“So, if I don’t do what you want, I pay?” Maria is staring at the screen, jerking her character from left to right. “Had I not reciprocated your advances, would you have pursued me until I did, wore me down, my feelings be damned.” Maria had learned enough about herself lately to reason she wasn’t as subtle as she hoped. Natasha had probably sensed her feelings for her, and that’s why she pounced. She knew all along that Maria wouldn’t turn her down if the opportunity arose.

Natasha doesn’t respond.

“That night… I told you it had been a rough week. Well, it’s been a rough year, a rough a lot of things, and yeah, you made it better. Your concern, your smile, the subtle ways you found to brush her hand against me… Your support. Shit. Guess how many people have told me that they loved me?”

“I do love you, Maria.”

“No, you love the idea of love—no, not even that. That’s giving you too much credit. You love the idea that you are capable of loving someone.”

“That last part—that I love the idea that I can love someone, yeah, that is true, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love you as well.”

Maria’s head snaps toward Natasha at those words. “I don’t want to be loved. I never asked for it.”

“We’re not children, Maria. We can talk about this.”

“Now you want to talk? So you can worm your way out of this. If you really do love me, don’t try to manipulate me any longer because we both know it’ll probably work because I will never be as devious as you.” Maria snorts. “You know, I wish we were children so someone could reprogram you to not hurt your so-called friends. But that ship has sailed. Isn’t it too bad?”

“That hurts. But it would hurt a whole lot more if I didn’t know it was as equally true for you as it is for me. If I’m calculating and selfish, then so are you. Is that not what brought us here?” Natasha doesn’t snap at Maria. In fact, she lowers her tone and looks away as she speaks. But still Maria thinks that’s the first time she has ever attacked Maria, said something out of spite.

Maria set the controller on the couch cushion—without pausing the game so enemies continue to strike her. “Oh, no. I will never be like you. Not one bit.”

They sit in silence. Maria’s throat was going dry. Any more chatter, and her voice would crack, which she couldn’t have. She thought about going to get a glass of water to rehydrate so they could continue arguing—because she felt like continuing this argument—but her muscles were tense from clenching them as she spoke. Beside her, Natasha must have felt similar because Maria catches her stretching her jaw. And Maria had to catch herself before she could smile at the Black Widow’s mundane gesture. Had they not been fighting, had Natasha not betrayed her, Maria would have put her hand against Natasha’s face and kissed her mouth, maybe whispering something cheesy like “let my tongue loosen your jaw.” Maria twitches at the thought, and she thought she saw Natasha push down a snicker in response.

They could laugh it off. They could go grab a drink to soothe the thirst they had worked up and come back and play the game together like they had initially planned. She might enjoy the game then since she wouldn’t have to watch herself repeatedly explode and then reassemble (because they’d figure out how to survive together). Except as Maria watches Natasha’s face return to indifference, she knows they couldn’t laugh it off any more than Maria could cross the chasm in the game.

“You’re just dying.”

Maria twitches again until she realizes Natasha had picked up the controller to stop the one-sided onslaught. “Another game you’re bad at?”

Natasha shoots down the enemies, which Maria could have done by herself, she thinks, but they had kept respawning and overwhelming her. Natasha rotates the camera and shoots the blaster at a target Maria had not seen—the target needed to trigger an avalanche of Lego blocks that form a bridge on which to cross the gulf. Maria grumbles. Natasha must have looked that up while Maria wasn’t watching.

“Hey, that’s cheating! You Googled that.”

“What’s Google?” Natasha winks—the same way she had winked at Maria so many other times—a wink that made Maria so jittery. It’s like an invitation, an outreached hand to take Maria along to skip through banter and laughter and fantasies.

Maria grits her teeth. On principle, she isn’t going to go without a fight. And she certainly won’t ever come along with Natasha just for the ride.

Maria clears her throat—partially because it is still quite dry and partially because Natasha had a tiny smile on her face as she played the game for Maria. Natasha doesn’t look up. Maria’s tapping the heel of her shoe on the ground and picking at the nail of her index finger with her thumb. She can’t tell if Natasha is genuinely amused with the game—if so, Maria curses herself for beginning to play it—or if she was ignoring Maria, turning their (albeit not very) hot war cold.

“I’m going to get a glass of water. You want anything?” Maria finally asks.

“Make me a sandwich,” Natasha mumbles.

“We’re not done here.” Maria squints at Natasha, trying to issue a warning but the warning fell flat.

Maria got the reference. It was out of place in the tense atmosphere but was also the only logical move, Maria figured. As she walks down the hall, slowly to buy herself more time, Maria feels a bit maniacal, an unsettling cross between anger and amusement, agitation and vigilance. The lights seem brighter, but she can’t seem to focus on anything at all. In the kitchen, she takes two cans of grape soda from the refrigerator and heads back to where Natasha is playing Lego Star Wars.

Back in the lounge, Maria drops the cans on the coffee table right beside the coasters, which she was ignoring.

“Where’d we get grape soda?” Natasha asks, popping open one of the cans. She hands it to Maria as she sits down.

“Steve, maybe? Was grape soda big when he was around the first time? Nostalgia stuff?”

“I’m not complaining.” Natasha takes a sip from the other can.

“I think back then though they had soda in glass bottles that you drank with a bendy straw.” Maria examines the can.

“Weren’t we going to finish?” Natasha asks.

“What? I just started the game. I don’t think we’ll have time to beat it.”

Now Natasha clears her throat—as if it a cue, the sound of a clapperboard. They’re not so much fighting as they are draining a wound.

“You really fuckin’ hurt me, Natasha.”

“That was not my intention.”

“I’m really happy you’re practicing being more open emotionally and willing to form relationships—really, I am. I want nothing more for you. Because I care about you—which if you weren’t aware implies that I have feelings too. That are fragile and underdeveloped, just like you.” Maria takes a sip of soda here, as if to wash away the fact that she had said they were anything alike.

“So I can’t be a trial partner or whatever for you. It’s not fair to me. And you’ve told me despite everything that I deserve a safe, loving relationship. Hell, you’re one of the few people who has ever told me that, and when you said it, I believed it, or I started to anyway. Because you could get me to believe anything you say, which is exactly the problem if you’re not being sincere. So I’ll wait for such a person who can give me what I now accept I deserve. Don’t feel guilty. I learned something here too. It wasn’t for nothing.”

Maria snorted. “I’d never have spoken one word about my feelings let alone however many that diatribe was before you—so thank you.”

“That’s not it…”

“Stop with the ‘that’s not it!’ You admitted it is it.”

To Vision’s question about Banner’s whereabouts, Natasha had replied that she hadn’t found him, that any leads led nowhere. She left it at that, and after everyone else had gone to do their own thing when it was only Natasha and Maria—who had not moved since Vision’s question—in the messy room. Natasha had raised an eyebrow and said that she had mostly forgotten about Bruce, that she was okay with having mostly forgotten him because at this point, thinking of him brought her back to a traumatic place—both Wanda’s vision and the embarrassment of having her friends know how she felt and having them also know how it had gone. And she had said she was glad she didn’t have to revisit the painful places, and she had touched Maria’s hand, saying then that things were better now.

Maria had felt like a hollowed-out statue then and so she wondered why she hadn’t crumbled at Natasha’s touch. She also had wondered why Natasha hadn’t been the first to leave to avoid ending up alone with Maria where she might have to address what Vision had asked. Only when Natasha purposely lingered so she could be with Maria as usual, did Maria realize that Vision’s question affected Natasha because of her own personal memories it had surfaced, not because of any potential hurt or confusion it might have caused Maria.

“Banner?” Maria had finally asked. Natasha’s hand was still on top of hers.

“Ah, yeah… I guess everyone noticed. It’s a little embarrassing… wasn’t like me at all. But you know… I go back and forth about whether I regret it.”

“Did you love him too?” Maria had rejoined.

“Maria?” Natasha had blinked, and Maria remembered thinking that maybe Natasha had finally caught on.

“I’m really sorry that didn’t work out for you, but I’m glad things are better for you now.” Maria had stood up and crossed her arms over her chest. She had looked down at Natasha who was still sitting there, and that had been the last time Maria had spoken to her until that evening.

“Yes, I can’t deny that I pursued Banner. That I made myself vulnerable to him first, and I did fantasize about us being together. And then, as you know, he ran off and hid.”

“Please, accept my condolences.”

“Maria, that’s not why I’m upset.”

“Right, off course. You’re upset because I caught on to the fact that you’re doing the same thing with me. And I for whatever reasons… I never ran from you superheroes.”

“You said once that you figured the reason you had never been in a serious relationship was you tended to fall for unattainable women.”

“Yes. Trust me, I remember our conservations too…” And I wish you would have stayed unattainable, Maria wanted to add.

“I won’t claim to be certain, but I think I went for Banner for that same reason.”

“Explain.” Maria would listen. She wanted this exchange to keep going. “He seemed willing when I last saw you together at the bar at the tower.” Again, Maria imagined that scene—like everything with SHIELD—another clue that didn’t ping on her radar at the same but made so much sense now.

Natasha shrugged. “He was reluctant. If not then but later. At Clint’s. I was shaken, really in need of someone, in need of an out because maybe for what was the first time, I felt like the Avengers were just more nonsense. Vividly recalling sexual assault, the moment when you violently had any chance at biological motherhood stolen before you fully knew what that meant will mess with your head. It might never had bothered me, except I’ve come to love Clint’s family, and at times, I dreamed about having that too. All I ever wanted with SHIELD, with the Avengers was to be part of something—that wasn’t terrible, where I was helping. Where I wasn’t marked as a killer.”

“Shit, Natasha, it isn’t fair to tell me that.” Neither of them are playing the game now, and Maria wants to turn it off.

“I don’t know if I ever believed he’d stay, that we could be a couple. I don’t know if I really believed I could leave. And I can’t ever know now. On the best of days, I doubt I have that much self-knowledge, and at that time, we were in the midst of another traumatic and world-threatening event.”

“Your point? You must know you’re not making a great argument for your case. You might as well plead guilty.” Maria presses the home button, and when the menu pops up, scrolls down to the option to turn off the system.

“I’m getting to it. But I’m not denying what I did in the past. I am denying though that I’m using you because my first choice didn’t work out, which is what you’re accusing me of.”

“And when you say it out loud, you have to hear how sleazy it sounds.”

“It would be. You’re not Bruce. You’re different.”

“Say something not contrived, or I’m walking away.” She wasn’t going to walk away regardless of what Natasha said.

“You took me to one of your favorite restaurants, remember, a few months after you were furious Barton hadn’t killed me. I wasn’t even supposed to leave the premise yet. Why?”

“Honestly, I just really felt bad for you. And I mean, at that point you were harmless. You’d already given us so much information that checked out, if you ran off, there’d be more people who wanted you dead than even you could fight off.”

“Lovely image.”

“Seriously. Part of why we held you so long, found busy work, and so many training courses was because you’d be much more of a target on any random mission we sent you off on than an asset. We had to wait until we dealt with the more substantial threats. Any advantage you would bring would be quickly nullified if you had some of the worst criminals tracking you. It wasn’t worth the risk to SHIELD personnel or the mission.”

“Or me?”

Maria had to admit that in the days immediately after Barton’s “different call,” she considered trying to convince Fury to let her send Natasha on a mission where she had a high probability of dying. If Maria couldn’t get her way through the direct route, she could work around the edges. “To some extent, after putting all the resources into retraining you and taking care of you for however long it had been at that point, we had to keep you safe, if for no other reason.”

“Thanks.”

“You know Fury has always had a soft spot for you.”

“And you did too?”

“You have pretty eyes, okay.”

“So, like every guy out there, you just wanted me for my looks?”

“I was harboring a fugitive. I needed something to sweeten the deal. Damnit, Nat, don’t pull me back into that.” Or, please, Natasha, do pull me back into that, whichever.

“You started it. Now and then. You broke a rule—you—because you cared.”

“I asked Fury first.”

“Still, my point remains.”

“I don’t know what your point was in the first place.”

“I don’t know, Maria. I just miss you, and I am sorry for hurting you.”

“I thought you were explaining how I’m different than Banner. And he cares, I’m sure. He wouldn’t hate himself for being the Hulk if he didn’t care about anyone, or you. I don’t hate him, and even if I did, credit where credit is due.”

“You know this isn’t about him, Maria.”

“And what if he came back—ready?”

“I’d give him a tour of our house and show him our white picket fence. He hurt me. There was a time I might have chased him…”

“But then… there was me! Rebounding I think is the term.”

“While we worked at SHIELD, last year even before Ultron—do you think we could have been together?”

“It would have been awkward for us to date while I was deputy director and you were one of the agents I sent to our most dangerous situations. Conflict of interest to say the least.”

“Emotionally, I mean.”

“I’m not answering that. This isn’t about me.”

“Fair. But it is about me so… It wouldn’t have ended well, and I do think it would have ended. Before we had much of a real chance. I’d have hurt you. I would have gotten drawn in, attached to you—but it could only have gone so far. I couldn’t have been honest with you, open like I am now. I’d have shut you out, and we’d have fought. And while you have your own reasons, you were never programmed to hurt someone if they stood in your way. So you’d have come up against that.” Natasha puts her head in her hands.

“We can curse everything that happened all we want, but you know when I was on the run with Steve trying to figure out what was up with SHIELD, I asked him if he’d trust me with his life, to save him… He said at that point, he would. Who I am to argue with Cap? Something changed along the way. And after Fury didn’t trust me enough to be part of his small circle… well, I realized I wasn’t going to be so secretive. It’s the real problem. It ruins things that take years to build. And with Banner, it’s best not to chase someone who won’t easily be able to be what you need from them. So, Maria, it’s best this happened now. I will chase someone who is very capable of being the person I need.”

“Shit, Natasha. How many times have you told me not to feel inferior because I’m not a superhero? Yet, no matter what you always out play me. Even rhetorically. And you want me to be with someone who constantly strikes at my biggest weakness? That is the opposite of what I need in a relationship.”

“That’s your unfounded insecurity, Maria, and it is better to be a small fish in a big pond than…”

“I know the expression! There are only two fish in this pond.”

“Well, all the most CO2 for us then.”

“Fish breathe oxygen. That’s trees your thinking of that inhale CO2.”

“Whoa, there, I don’t have a degree in biology.”

“Neither do I. That’s like kindergarten stuff. Beside the military, I studied computer science.”

“See, you know something I don’t…”

“I don’t care to go off on any tangents or push any cute jokes as far as they can go.”

“Think about it, Maria. Let’s not argue anymore. We’re just going in circles, and we’ll only come to get more flustered, and you’ll only resent me more.”

“Think about what? I know what I know.”

“Whatever this made you think of.” Before Maria could react to step away, Natasha kisses her on the cheek. Maria brings her hand to where Natasha’s lips had touched her as she watches Natasha leave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to anyone who has read this far : )
> 
> I'll try to update soon. I have most of the next chapter written now. I just need to finish it.


	15. SHIELD, pt. 3-Natasha

Maria and Natasha are sitting out on a balcony over-looking the fall night. It’s chilly so Maria had worn a sweater over her pajamas, Natasha had snatched a throw from the living room which she draped over their shoulders, and they’d turned the lights off in the room behind them so it wouldn’t pollute their peace.

“I remember,” Maria began, her breathe visible as a puff of white that slowly dispersed into the night, “walking outside as a child toward the end of fall, after we turned the clocks back so it would be dark before dinner time—or everyone else’s anyway. We didn’t have a dinner time because we didn’t have dinner. I’d walk down this pavement that looked to me to be perpetually damp, and occasionally, I’d look up to see the glow behind the curtains in the homes. I’d imagine parents standing over the stove, stirring dinner one last time, kids running into the kitchen sliding on their socks, called to wash their hands and set the table.” Maria huffs, sipping at the hot cider Natasha had made. “Then I’d shuffle back to our dark, run-down apartment, switch on the exposed lightbulb in the kitchen and have a ketchup sandwich—maybe with a slice of American cheese.”

Maria noticed Natasha shudder at the thought of such a meal. “Yeah,” she says, “whatever, it is what it is, right?”

Natasha took Maria’s hand, which still felt warm from touching the mug. “Ketchup and American cheese on white bread… Is that why you wanted your cheese sandwiches grilled on artisan 19-grain bread and your tomato in the form of soup?”

Maria chuckles as she leans closer to Natasha. “It’s probably a subconscious thing. You know, a few years later, I had won the state championship for cross-country running, right—that was the fall after I also won some track events. It was a cold, windy day—like the day before there were leaves on the trees, but that day’s gusts knocked them all off, really delivering fall. Well, afterward, we went out to dinner to celebrate, and I had some fancy grilled cheese. I think. Or it could have been a pasta dish or pizza.” Maria shrugs. “The human memory is fallible.”

“That story makes me want to make you a grilled cheese sandwich with pasta and sauce in it.”

“I think that’s called lasagna.”

“Hmmm, yeah, a grilled lasagna sandwich. I can do that.”

Maria puts her hand on Natasha’s cheek to guide it toward her so she can kiss Natasha. She holds the kiss, entwining her fingers around Natasha’s and snuggling as close to her as she can. Natasha is warm and smells like the pomegranate body wash they had used in the shower earlier.

They’re huddled on the bench under the throw, Natasha gazing up at the bright, visible stars in the overhead constellations. Maria stretches her legs, trying to see the color of her woolen socks in the darkness.

“The sky is clear.”

“Yeah.” Maria’s head snaps up. The night sky had always made her hair stand up, left her frightened from feeling so exposed under something so orderly. She had spent so many nights in overly well-lit rooms in overly well-lit cities. It was no wonder her mind never turned off, she figured.

“Sometimes… I hope the human memory isn’t that fallible though.” Natasha doesn’t move. Maria’s arm is slung around her shoulders, her head resting on the soft material of Maria’s sweater.

“Really? You’re never wanted to misremember?”

Natasha doesn’t respond right away. Maria knows she should let the night clam her, that she should enjoy the warm cider, the feeling of the throw against her skin, the woman she so loves beside her, but she also wanted to keep shifting her eyes, tapping her fingers on the mug and rubbing her toes against her socks.

“I wanted to tell you something, Maria. I… I want to share… I’ve seen you vulnerable. You’ve talked about your past. I feel like I should even things out.”

“You don’t have to do that, Natasha. You’ve opened up to me plenty in your own way. I know you’ve been trying.”

“I know I don’t, but I want to. You used the word “girlfriend,” and I’ve been told relationships reciprocal. Right?”

“That’s what they say. It would make sense.” Maria couldn’t remember any relationships that weren’t one-sided—either people with power over her or the others who she was in charge of.

“Right, so we’ll just say it’s true. I don’t imagine it could harm anything if not. But what I wanted to say was…” Natasha looks up at Maria who is watching her with concern in her eyes. She steals a kiss from the unexpecting Maria, who rubs her back around her spine in tight circles. When she felt Natasha was anxious, Maria would rub her, pressing her finger tips into Natasha’s skin, like her touch was a weighted blanket draped over her that could calm Natasha.

“I… well, after we stopped Project Insight, after I’d put Congress in their place—”

“Which for the record is a privilege I never had.”

“Maria. You had the privilege of not having to reveal all the heinous acts you once committed to a public that mostly had always viewed you as a hero. Although… I know Congress so I might have still come out ahead. But the point is that after I gave Steve and Sam what I could about the Winter Solider and saw them off, I disappeared.”

“Yeah, I didn’t really see you again—in person, any way until that night after you guys got back the scepter. You were behind the bar, chatting with Banner, I think.”

“Yeah…” Natasha had gone stiff under Maria’s fingers. She rubs her eyes with her thumb and index fingers and then shakes her head quickly, as if she were trying to cast off water or dust from her skin and hair.

“Sorry to keep interrupting you. Thank you for trusting me with this story, Nat.”

“Trust, yeah… so I had safe houses scattered about, and I went to one of those first—intending just to rest, process what the hell had just happened and mentally regroup. Once I got settled in, I found myself sleeping a lot. My mind was still sharp, body still on over-drive so to speak, but I’d, contrary to like the experience of everyone else and my own past experience after something shocking or traumatic, I would fall asleep easily—like I only needed to lay down or sit down and let my eyes close. And I’d have these dreams about Russia—vivid, detailed dreams—and I’d never before had a vivid dream that wasn’t a nightmarish flashback.

In the dreams, I was walking through this little Russian village, nestled between rolling hills and a stream. The homes were made from wooden planks, all of which showed some varying degree of wear and stability and reflected expansions and hasty repairs. I’d see vegetables growing, cramped and tangled between meshed wires fences, rusty tractors and cars, some hollowed out, others the only way out of that place. Seriously, Maria, it was like the archetypical still life, which is why my mind constructed that, I guess.”

Maria nods.

“Anyway, I’d walk along the dusty, impromptu path worn from years of walking, curving between patches of tall grass and white wildflowers, dodging chickens who were squawking and flapping their useless wings as they waddle, waving at some little children who might have been chasing those chickens. I don’t know. But I’d always end up quite alone, approaching a rickety well—the base was slabs of concrete taken from something that had long ago crumbled, the rest made of splintering wood and faded tin. I’d wait there, listening to the quiet thuds the wind made when it struck the tin, so confused because the well didn’t have a pail on a rope or a crank.”

At that point, Natasha pauses to sip at her drink and look at Maria to gauge her response. Maria hasn’t moved since her last nod. The throw is wrapped tightly around Maria’s arm, and her arm is wrapped tightly around Natasha. She’s holding her, cradling her. Natasha had grown pale, maybe from the cold air, maybe from telling her story, and her eyes had dimmed because she was elsewhere, remembering a distant place her mind had created.

“This girl comes while I’m standing a few feet from the well—blond, long un-brushed hair, flowered dress that buttons down the front. At first, she never spoke, just peers into the well’s depths—so, I’d do the same, to see what had so captivated her. Then she whispers ‘mother, father.’ I wake up before any image can appear before me in the well. That’s probably why I slept so much, hoping to see them but there was never so much as waves in that well.”

Maria kisses Natasha on the top of her head. She could hug Natasha until their bodies merged, and it would never be enough, Maria knew, but she let Natasha cry into her sweater, wipe her nose and tears on her sleeve.

Natasha sniffles, coughing to clear her throat. “But here’s the thing, Maria. I’m from some grimy, over-populated industrial city, not a quaint, rural village. If ever, I’ve probably only seen such a village on missions. My parents would have been factory workers, not farmers.”

“You remember them?”

“I’m not sure. That’s why I hope the human memory has some truth to it. How much of your past self can you reclaim after brain-washing? That’s a rhetorical question. Who the fuck knows that? Clint said I should go to a psychoanalysis—you know, someone who will set me off on some free association or whatever it is called so I will recall my repressed memories. I’m not even sure if I want to know. Would you?”

Maria grinned. “Hypnosis to remember the time before my birth—the months I was in my mom’s womb. It would have to be that, that’s the only time I ever spent with her. Yeah, sure I would, as long as they woke me up before I was born—too much blood. I see enough of that in my waking life.”

“She died…”

“Have I never told you?”

“No, Maria. For as long as we’ve been friends, I didn’t know anything about you until recently.”

“Right. There are lines people like us never cross, aren’t there?

“And such trivialities aren’t important to the job.”

“She died giving birth to me. From blood loss. Which no one would fuckin’ tell me until I was an adult. According to my father, I killed her—no other details. Because obviously, I must already have known because I spent those nine months when my cells should have been duplicated, specializing and wiring themselves, plotting the crime. That would explain why my brain is screwed up—just didn’t focus enough on developing as a fetus. And with my aunt, my mom’s sister who is only a year younger—it took her that long to talk about it. Which makes sense, it was more her loss than mine.”

“What a perfect fuckin’ tragedy!”

“Isn’t it though?”

“I believe the proper next line for us is ‘Shit happens. It is what it is.’”

“It is ‘it is what it is.’ How can you mourn something you never knew?”

“Apparently, I can… And I do. I’d been on my way home—my parents both worked all day so in the afternoon, I’d go peek through the windows at the dance studio. I’d have to stand on my tip-toes to see inside, but the girls twirling in such control mesmerized me. Sometimes the instructor would spot me and give me little candies, tell me that I had the petite body and poise to be a dancer. Oh, the irony, right?

I was skipping along the cracked pavement when someone grabbed me. It wasn’t anything dramatic or climatic. They recruited the future Black Widow by grabbing her from behind and throwing her into the back of a truck. I screamed and flailed, but kidnappings weren’t that uncommon, I guess, and if you intervened, you’d be targeted too. I didn’t cry until after I’d been sitting in the pitch black, stale-aired truck for some time. I wasn’t crying for myself—I had no idea what I was in for—but for my parents, thinking about them coming home that night to our flat expecting to find me on the floor playing with the dolls my mom had made me—only to find an empty place, the dolls on the bed where I left them that morning. I imagined them waiting by our one window, then going to sit at the table while the clock above moved into early morning.

Did they ask around? Did anyone tell them even a rumor that little girls were being kidnapped? What if they died not knowing what happened to their only child? Maybe they sat up all night that night and as many other nights for as long as it took for them to forget I existed. It wouldn’t have mattered because they’d have had to file back into the factory at the crack of dawn regardless. Or that’s how I remember what happened. It might not have been like that at all. Could have been a fuckin’ party for all I know.”

“Can I stop you for a second?” Maria is turning her empty mug over in her hand. “Would you mind if I just chucked this mug off the balcony? It would honestly make me feel a lot better,”

Natasha gives Maria a goofy grin. She shrugs and whips her mug into the darkness, beating Maria to it. The last drops of now cold cider splash back at them. Maria jumps to her feet, using her momentum to fling her mug.

“I bet mine went farther!”

“I will bet you even more that we’re not about to go check whose went farther. And even if we did, how would we know whose is whose? They were exactly the same.”

“We’d have to do a DNA test.”

“But we both touched both of them, and we’ve kissed a few dozen times so our saliva on the mugs would just be a mixture.”

“Well, that’s gross…”

“What’s gross about DNA?”

“I meant the saliva part…”

“Somebody will find those in the morning. Somebody here always finds the stuff that gets left lying around.”

Maria plops back on the bench, and Natasha crawls onto her, pulling the throw over her as she settles herself on Maria’s lap.

“And now back to the screenplay for this year’s best comedy…” Natasha says. “So I was having those dreams, and because of them, my parents consumed my thoughts. I couldn’t think about anything else, which hey, maybe was a godsend. I could have been thinking about all the primetime specials about the heinous crimes one of Earth’s mightiest so-called heroes committed in her past life.”

“Yeah, I think I saw one of those. It was titled ‘Just Who is the Black Widow Avenging?’ No, Natasha, while the media did have a field day post-SHILED, it wasn’t centered around you.”

“That makes sense. I was never that important. Have you ever gone into a toy store and looked at the superhero stuff? Wait, don’t actually answer that. I’m not sure I want to know about your collection of Black Widow figures. You can buy like fifty Iron Man toys, a Captain America waffle-maker, but you’d have trouble finding as much as a Black Widow pencil.”

“Why don’t we have that Captain America waffle-maker though?”

“Steve banned it. Like literally, it is in the house rules. It broke Sam’s heart. And speaking of broken hearts, the dreams drove me to slip off to Russia. I spent the whole flight over daydreaming about my arrival at their apartment. I’d arrive just as they were sitting down for dinner, my arrival disrupting them but also bringing a small smile to their faces since it was one of the only things for years to break their routine.

I couldn’t decide if I wanted them to immediately recognize me or not.

In the case that they did, they would throw their arms around me as soon as they cracked the door open enough to get a glimpse, hugging me before I even crossed the threshold.

In the other case, I come inside and sit with them at the wooden table, like I would have decades ago had I not been kidnapped, and I’d get to see them up close as the people they’d aged into. Their hands would be gnarly from decades of factory work, shaking but still strong. My mom’s hair would be tied up in a scarf, but a few grey curls would peek out, and my dad would have to lean close to me to see or hear, his once keen senses (where I got mine from) faded with time.

‘We had a daughter who would be about your age.’ My mom would say.

I’d have to bit my lip to stifle my excitement.

‘She was short like you but less sturdy. When we looked at her, we had wished for her a life other than work in a factory—so she could keep her soft hands and bright eyes.’

My eyes would brighten as they said this, and I’d take my mom’s hand, watching her eyes brighten like mine just had (I got my eyes from her).

‘Who are you?’ My father would ask—half defensive, half hopeful.

‘Natalia,’ I would respond, and they would know.

They’d then burst into tears, yet still continue talking. “We hoped since we lost you, every day at work while we choked on our own breath and did the same task, that we’d find you waiting at home. We had to keep working, so that when we found you, we could buy you whatever you wanted. Every day, we’d call for you, no matter how old you’d have been, how we came to choke when we called and our voices became unrecognizably raspy.”

I never did work in a factory, I’d say. I became a superhero. They’d have a small black and white television on which they’d watched the news and saw the aliens invade New York (but didn’t even know what the internet was so they’d have no idea about my dark secrets). I’d tell them I fought the aliens. I helped save the world—twice. I was an Avenger (and that would just have meaning to them). They’d tell me how proud they were of me, how much they’d always wanted and missed me.

And that’s where the village would come in: I could buy them a cottage in any peaceful, beautiful place they wanted, and we could live there. Hell, I could have even brought them to the States. They could have a farm by Clint.

But, as I’m sure you can imagine, that isn’t what happened. It was a sunny day—or it would have been had not for the thick pollution in the air. I took a cab to the area where I lived as a little kid. How’d I remember? The same way I knew who to look for: my parents had written on the inside of my coat their name and address, in case I ever got lost. I clung to it as long as I could, memorized those numbers and names.

Long story short, I went to the apartment we lived in, knocked on the door. There was a young couple living there. They’d remodel the flat somewhere in the decades since I’d last seen it. My parents had had grey linoleum and dark red, pin-striped wallpaper.” Natasha stops there and is quiet for a while—a silence which Maria doesn’t break, knowing the pause is as much a part of the story as anything else.

“Hah, as if I could remember that. It was probably a memory of the Red Room. I’m projecting. We could Google ‘Soviet Era Flat,’ and it’d be more accurate.

After they’d opened the door, I’d stood there baffled, eyes darting around the now bright room. The man stared at me, waiting for me to talk, I guess, to explain why I’m at his door. Then I wondered if maybe he recognized me from the news and was uncertain if he should bring it up, but eventually, he sighed, put his hand against the doorframe and asked ‘Can I help you?’

Then I blurted out ‘who are you?’ like I was the one who just had a stranger appear at their door. That must have scared the man because he went to shut the door, but I stuck my foot in it and nudged it open just enough so I could see him again.

‘Please, leave my family alone. We don’t want any trouble.’

‘Your family?’ I echoed, and then I spotted his wife holding a young kid—younger than I would have been when I was last there but still. I just backed away from the door, removing my foot so he can shut it. But he doesn’t, not right away. He looks me up and down once more time, which gives me enough time to muster the strength to say that I grew up in that flat, but I had gone away for a long time, and I was now searching for the parents I left behind.

His look went from confusion and fear to one of pity. I think he explained that him and his wife had moved there before their first child was born, but my mind was rushing away to somewhere without sound.

After some snooping—I had hoped I wouldn’t have to use those skills—I found them.” Natasha looks up at Maria.

Maria rests her chin on top of Natasha’s head, wrapping her arms and the throw around her so Maria held Natasha as if Maria was a bird who was protecting Natasha under her wings.

“I love you,” she whispered. “You’re safe here.”

“You know how this is going to end?” Natasha laughs and sniffles, her head against Maria’s chest.

“I love you, Natasha. I love you no matter what you have experienced, what you feel.”

“Yeah… well, they were buried, or at least memorialized, in this cemetery between some rust-orange block towers. Their gravestones were right up against the chain link fence that separated the graveyard from a tiny park with old metal equipment.

I sat on the swing for some time, swaying back and forth, wondering if the ballet studio whose window I used to peek in was still there, wondering how my parents died, wondering if I even could find the street on which the studio was located, how often my parents would have thought about me, the adult I would have become if I had continued growing up here.

I’d been grinding my boot into the dirt under the swing as I’d been on it. I noticed I had scuffed them, and my first instinct was to hop up, run from there and scrub them down. Once I had the will to stand again, I look back to my parents’ gravestones, noticing then how weeds almost made them invisible, how a layer of dirt was climbing the stone.

I didn’t know what my mother’s favorite color was, what flowers would make her smile. I bought the most expensive ones from a woman selling flowers on the street because you know, I could, and then I went back and yanked up all the weeds in front of their stone tossing them at the fence. I’d been concerned about the scuffs on my boots, but there I was digging the weeds up by their roots, caking it on my hands, under my nails, on my knees. Once the area was clear, I laid the flowers on the empty soil, and I sat there. That neighborhood in that city in Russia felt as foreign and surreal to me as if I hadn’t been born there, but I didn’t want to leave because I wanted to find my parents.

Back where I had been staying, I broke down crying, just sat on the floor, curled up and cried. I had safe houses around there too, but I didn’t go to any of them. I was at a small inn or something. Was I in danger being out in the open? Maybe. But honestly, at that point I wasn’t worried about anyone else finding me there, figuring out who I was, because I didn’t know where I was, that I was Black Widow, someone worth hunting down.

Clint bugged me until I told him where I was and what I was doing, and when he knew, he begged me to come back to the States and stay with his family. And eventually, I did and they took care of me, after I spent more days alone curled up crying.

I didn’t eat or shower or move from the floor in any substantial way for a time. I thought without the purpose SHIELD had given me, since I was so alone, so disconnected, I was thinking if I could just let go of the will to survive that had been so ingrained in me, I could be with my family again. There were a few times I saw myself running toward them… but I hadn’t eaten in days also so I’m sure my brain made up a lot of stuff. That’s when I went to stay with Clint.”

“Natasha, you know, you’re never alone out there. There’s a lot of us here for you, and most of us really don’t have lives so we can come running easily. You’ve had us ever since…”

Natasha rubbed Maria’s sweater where her tears had wet it.

Maria could feel the warmth of Natasha’s breath, trapped in their closeness. “I love you, Nat.” To Maria, it felt so insufficient to repeat that. “I’m so sorry. I can’t even tell you how much I wish I could make this better. I can’t imagine what you’re been through.”

“Like hell you can’t Maria…”

***

Maria had sent Agent Barton to Eastern Europe precisely (or she liked to think) 8 days 13 hours and 17 minutes prior to him contacting her. An agent working communications patched him through to Maria without even first asking. Under ordinary circumstances, no one would dare do such a thing without her permission, but before she locked herself up in her office, she had told her agents to contact her immediately with any hint of an update.

SHIELD had a thick and continually growing—albeit growing at a slower pace recently, Maria had observed—file on the Black Widow. Each page in the file represented an incident SHIELD—Maria—had been unable to stop, served as a reminder to her that someone, somewhere could so readily outsmart her, could so efficiently thwart her otherwise excellent record of saving the day. Some of the incidents they hadn’t even foreseen. Maria did not tolerate intelligence voids, but she found herself blindsided by the Black Widow, time and again. And Maria despised her for it.

Barton first reached out through voice alone, and although he had initiated the transmission, he said nothing at first after Maria greeted him. She was shaking so hard she had had trouble getting her ear piece on.

“Did you get her?” Maria finally blurted. She’d been holding her breath through that half a minute of silence, and she needed to breathe. She needed to hear Barton’s voice. As much as she wanted to hear him report that he had killed the Black Widow, Maria wanted him to come back alive more. She remembered the light-hearted optimistic in his blue eyes as he checked his equipment before leaving. He was telling her not to worry, that he had this, and his voice and his face would haunt her forever if he in fact did not “got this.”

Barton didn’t respond right away so Maria checked for any lag or a breakdown in their secure channel but found no sign. And when she stopped riffling around, she could hear him breathe.

“Barton, are you alright?”

“Not exactly.”

“Are you injured? Do you require assistance?” If he had been hurt, at least he could respond. They could regroup.

“No. No, on the assistance and no, on being injured. Not exactly on getting Widow.”

“Explain.”

Barton switched on the video channel. Behind Barton who was still suited up, bound at her wrists and ankles to the bench sat the Black Widow. Her head was tilted downward so her hair, stained by what looked like ash or dust and matted with dried blood, blocked her face. The arm that faced the screen had been bandaged, but red broke through the clean, white wrapping. Barton had not only spared the life of his target but had tended to her wounds—which he had probably inflicted—as well.

“Barton, explain.”

Clint ran one of his gloved hands through his hair. “I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill her. She’s a kid, and she’s not in her right mind.”

“She’s dangerous! An assassin who has killed ruthlessly… She’s responsible for countless murders, including children, bombings, fires…”

“Don’t, Hill. I know what she has done. She knows what she has done. What she had to do. The Red Room brainwashed her. She never had a chance to be anything different. I wasn’t going to be the one to end her life when that’s the only thing she’s ever known.”

Maria rubbed where her eyes met her nose. “You’ve got to be kidding. You want me to be careful of the feelings of our most wanted?”

Clint didn’t answer but looked over his shoulder at Black Widow who hadn’t moved and was still limp in the restraints. Probably saving her energy for the scheme she was cooking up as they spoke. Maria only hoped Barton would reach HQ before she finished planning so he at least had a chance. Clint was bringing the Black Widow to SHIELD HQ. He had defied orders, and now he was bringing the Black Widow to SHIELD HQ. It sounded foreign regardless of how much she repeated it in her head. He had chosen to take on this mission. Had he not wanted to make a tough—she wouldn’t have called killing the Black Widow a tough call—call, he should have let another agent have this serious—and to Maria, personal—mission.

“This isn’t your decision to make, Agent Hill. Tell Fury. We’ll be home soon.”

“It wasn’t your call either. You had orders.” Maria snapped, her anger breaking through her practiced indifference.

Before the screen flickered off, Maria had caught a glimpse of the Black Widow’s face. At the urgency and demand in Clint’s voice, she had look up. Their eye contact had come as a kick to Maria, knocking away any breath she had left. As Maria stared at the blank screen, she wondered if she had imagined Clint’s call, the Black Widow’s pale face marred with cuts bright red with fresh blood, and her blue eyes that stung Maria as if the Black Widow had hit Maria with her Widow’s Bite. Dazed, Maria fumbled for her headset to call Fury, only to find it on her head.

As Maria waited for Fury to respond to her, memories of reports of catastrophes the Black Widow had orchestrated, false trails she had led SHIELD on while she struck somewhere else entirely jabbed at her like jagged shards twisted into her flesh. More than the circumstances, she remembered the anger. The uncertainty had faded, and she swore she could taste blood.

“What it is, Hill?”

“Sir,” Maria started, then paused. She realized she had bitten her tongue, and so yeah, she really was tasting blood.

“Spit it out, Hill. Did you see a ghost? Call maintenance or security if you did, and leave me alone.”

Maria had wanted to answer “No, sir, no ghost. But I did see a Black Widow.” Who should have been a ghost at this point. But instead she swallowed the blood and steeled herself. “Agent Barton completed his mission. Fury held his eye contact—although, she thought she saw him loosen his shoulders at the indication that Clint had survived.

“Agent Barton captured the Black Widow, sir. He’s bring her to HQ as we speak. Barton said he could not bring himself to kill her.”

Fury stood, already reaching for what she assumed were the weapons he had on his desk. “Prepare an interrogation room with the best security we’ve got. Put all agents on alert. I’ll be waiting by the docking bay.”

Maria obeyed. But she considered the strict security protocols pointless. If the Black Widow wanted to escape, she could eventually, no matter what SHIELD threw in her way. Maria knew that—she had read reports—the Black Widow had gotten herself out of situations where the enemy held her, out-numbered her and had far better fire-power before. They might as well unbind her arms and legs and invite her to the cafeteria for a cup of tea and a scone. Which Maria would do in the near future—but not that day. That day, they would meet in the maybe inadequately secured interrogation room.

It would take Maria and Natasha all of two months before they met regularly for coffee—although at first, Maria had to bring the coffee to Natasha in the cell SHIELD required she live in while they retrained her.

On the day Maria first met the Black Widow though, as she waited for Fury and Clint and her, she just hoped that SHIELD would be able to lock her up for the rest of her natural—or unnatural depending on what the Red Room had done to her—life, that the madness had ended and the threat that was once the Black Widow was now neutralized.

Guards brought the Black Widow into the holding cell, leaving the lights off until Fury entered. When Maria saw Clint, she must have glared because he glared back, and Clint wasn’t the spontaneous glaring type. Clint stepped toward her, so close that he had her pinned against the one-way screen.

“The hell is wrong with you, saying those things. She was sitting right there.”

“Did she hit you head so hard it scrambled your already loose brain? Or did she brainwash you? Damn right I’ll discuss the murders a murderer committed in front of them. Are you worried about her feelings? The way she worried about all the children she killed? No, no, I bet your cowardly ass was just afraid my words might trigger her to break loose and kill you. You should have considered that sooner!”

“She won’t hurt anyone… not anymore”

“Am I really hearing you say this? She’s been our most wanted for how long?”

“Okay, Agent Hill, if you hate her so much, why don’t you go in there and shoot her yourself.” Barton pushed his gun—probably unfired because he preferred his bow and arrow—into her hand.

Maria could feel the screen behind her, knew the Black Widow was behind it, secured in the darkness. She remembered the glimpse she had gotten of the Black Widow’s eyes—the sickening familiarity of them that had momentarily undone Maria. She wondered how the Black Widow looked now—a blank expression probably, repressing fear at a decision she could not control, the punishment they’d inflict when the lights came on. The many cuts Barton had given her had to hurt as she sat in the cold, silence with nothing to focus on but the defeat surrounding her.

“Fuck,” Maria muttered. She sets the gun on a metal shelf with a clang.

“Didn’t think so. Put away that self-righteous ego or your personal vendetta, Agent Hill. Or at least don’t put it ahead of someone’s life.”

“Agent Baron, Agent Hill, that’s enough,” Fury had entered the room.

“Will all due respect, sir, we’re supposed to be better.” Clint says this as he backs away from Maria.

“Spare us your moral lecture! You just want to play the hero.”

“You’re classic, Maria. Me playing the hero? That’s you. And it’s blinding you to the fact that killing her won’t avenge her victims—not when she was their first victim.”

Maria hadn’t known then that Clint had a wife and a young kid stashed in the country. She hadn’t known that he had run from his birth family because his father beat him so much it damaged his hearing, that when he finally escaped his abusive family, he became trapped in the life of a thief with the carnival crew who saved him and taught him how to shoot arrows, and steal. She did know that his vague past had left him with a specific skill set that made him valuable to SHIELD. That much she had read in his file. But she didn’t know that Fury had recruited him not just for his skills but to give him a second chance—a choice. Maria hadn’t known these things because back then, she never talked to the other agents.

“I said enough, both of you. I’ll handle the Black Widow from here. Thank you, Agent Barton, for completing your mission. Now I want you both out of my sight until I can sort out some of this mess.”

Fury went into the interrogation room, and Clint turned to leave—but not before he stuck his tongue out at Maria.

In the aftermath of the acquisition of Black Widow, Maria had found herself distracted, which had not been the effect she would have predicted. She would have imagined a renewed motivation, a hyper focus on what was to come next after this success, but instead she found a distraction that struck like a spark that ignited a fuse, which then burst into an array of possibilities. She had still considered Black Widow to be Clint’s problem at that time, but in one of her frequent daydreams, could picture a time when instead of sending Clint off alone on the most dangerous missions, Black Widow could accompany him. Maria didn’t foresee a target equivalent to Black Widow—and she still stands by the exceptionalness of Natasha—but had such a threat emerged, they’d be more prepared, and for the future deputy director that prospect made her weak with joy.

But there was a more forbidden potential too—which sometimes broke through. She found herself repeating things like “I can’t believe Barton brought her back or that Fury approved. Why aren’t we trying her for murder, espionage or terrorism?” to co-workers she usually didn’t speak with. Maria had never been one to unnecessarily mingle (although, this did change after Natasha suggested girls’ nights), but she was doing it more then, and she was throwing in those comments about Black Widow. Had she created a word cloud from her speech then, Black Widow have been the largest. She just wanted to hear herself say Black Widow’s name.

Yet, with Clint, she tried to avoid having any discussion of Black Widow.

“If you really hate her so much, maybe you should get to know her. Pretend she’s like broccoli, and you just need to try her a few times to acquire the taste.” Clint’s exact words.

I shouldn’t have to become accustomed to Black Widow, Maria had thought. She’s not broccoli. She’s a poison, and you can’t acquire that taste—not without casting aside your own morals anyway.

Clint must have seen that thought reflected in Maria’s face because he replied, “I know, Maria, isn’t the world such an unjust place?”

In the Marines, no one—let alone a guy who preferred a stone-age weapon to any high-tech gun—had lectured Maria. It wasn’t about justice, she told herself, as much as following the rules.

“And it is almost like we joined SHIELD to take a figurative and literal stab at that injustice.” Clint had continued.

Maria had pinched her mouth to the side. “It’s a lot, Barton. I’m used to doing things a certain way, But I’m trying.” Needless-to-say befriending your most wanted enemy was not that way.

“Funny you say that you’re trying. I think Natalia is trying too, and I know she is used to doing things a certain way as well. And I’m also sure if you chatted with her, she’d tell you it is a lot for her too. It’s funny how I should sympathize with you about that, but you can’t sympathize with her about the same thing.”

“I haven’t murdered—”

“We’ve all killed people, Maria.”

Clint’s words took Maria back to her father’s accusation: you murdered your mother, an innocent, loving, selfless woman who undoubtedly had only the best hopes for Maria. With Clint’s eyes on her in the present, and her own eyes focused years back, she felt like she was suffocating, like she had to choke for air just to keep breathing. She wasn’t though; she appeared as usual, unaffected. The fuck if even the doctors could pinpoint the exact reason her mother had bleed out during Maria’s birth. It had just happened. Quickly and irrecoverably.

“That’s different.”

“’That’s different’ is the battle cry of the defensive.”

The fuck if even SHIELD’s intel could pinpoint the exact reason Natalia Romanova had been kidnapped as a young girl and forced to train as an assassin. It too had happened though—quickly and irrecoverably.

“What’s done is done.” Maria tries to justify.

“Dumbass, I’m trying to tell you what’s done isn’t done. My own father hit me so hard, it scrambled my natural hearing. That’s done.” SHIELD was filled with as many sob stories as secrets.

“Well, you’re alive aren’t you?” Maria didn’t know why she said that. Clint was alive. Black Widow was alive. She was alive. But her mother was dead. Countless civilians were dead—Black Widow’s doing. Sometimes even SHIELD’s acceptable collateral damage.

“Then why the fuck did you want to kill Nat?”

“I didn’t want her dead?” For all the times, Maria had maintained her calm indifference during urgent situations, the mere thought of Black Widow made her want to rage.

“Like hell! You fought with me because I couldn’t kill her.”

“I wanted it done, no more unpredictable attacks and undermining of our intelligence.” Undermining of her own intelligence.

“Is that what is happening here? Except now you get the added bonus of taking out all the terrorist cells that Black Widow has alerted you to that you had no clue existed.”

“You have to be suspicious in this line of work.”

“You’re right. And have we not vetted all the intel she has given us as well as can be, have we not kept her locked up and surveilled?”

Maria sighed. She was personally doing both. Corroborating intelligence and managing the agents she had sent out on missions related to what Black Widow had told them had exhausted Maria. They’d taken out more terrorist organizations in the last three weeks than in Maria’s whole time at SHIELD. It was a win by any standard—for SHIELD and for the unknown lives that would otherwise have been victimized. That was SHIELD’s mission, peace-keeping; Clint was right about that much. Yet Maria remained unsatisfied. As if, she wanted something else from the situation. From Black Widow.

 As she worked, Maria kept at least one eye on the feed from the camera in Black Widow’s room. To make sure she wasn’t plotting to undermine SHIELD from within one of their holding cells. Black Widow had had to cut her hair, so now it fell just above her shoulders. The ends on one side had been hopelessly tangled from dried blood from a gaping wound where one of Clint’s spiked arrows had pierced deep into her skin. Clint had actually hit her numerous times if her wounds were any indication, which given Black Widow’s training as compared to Clint’s was impressive. Even more impressive was the fact that Black Widow must have pulled it out in the middle of their battle.

Despite the fact that SHIELD had provided Black Widow with a bed in her cell, Maria observed more than once that Natasha preferred the floor. When she first noticed Natasha not in bed at a late hour when Maria was updating files on recently completed missions, Maria had gone from automatic to alert, fearing Black Widow might have found a spot in the cell where the camera couldn’t surveil her, where she could repurpose something into a weapon, contact someone on the outside. But when Maria more closely studied the video feed, she spotted Black Widow curled up on the floor with no pillow or blanket. She couldn’t tell if Black Widow was sleeping or just lying still in hopes of sleep, but she imagined that even Black Widow had to sleep sometimes even if like Maria, it was infrequently and disturbed. When Maria realized her fingertips were on the screen, she yanked her hand away but not before she fingertips went numb, like the tingling feeling that comes from sitting on a leg or a foot.

Maria knew Natalia Romanova had been kidnapped, exposed to brutal conditions to break her down so they could reconstruct her as a single-minded assassin. She’s seen photos of the brutality branded into Black Widow’s psyche, reflected now in her eyes—eyes that haunted Maria then and had been behind so many sleepless nights spent reviewing Black Widow’s files, repeating to herself that if she reread, she could crack the code and bring Black Widow down.

“Clint, I usually don’t give a shit about this kind of stuff, of course, but I need to know where you got this soapbox on which you’re preaching.”

“Don’t pretend you’re above gossip, Hill.”

Gossip, okay. Now crucial information needed to understand her colleagues was gossip.

“Couldn’t you say all intel is gossip?” Maria blinked, and for a second felt a crack in the tension. They could laugh it off and return their focus to terrorists and criminals. Except as Maria knew, they just couldn’t.

Clint stared at her though slits in his eyelids, apparently not accustomed to the budding attitude Natasha would go on to joke would make her a good comedian.

“When I was a kid, my bro and I ran from an abusive home. A carnival crew found us, brought us into their fold. I thought they were training me to shoot arrows so I could perform in their show. I was excited to perform in their show. But yeah, they thought that was a real hoot. They earned their keep from thievery. My brother was on board for that, but I refused at first—so they left me behind.

I chased after them.

If you want to condemn Natalia, condemn me as well. But trust me, there are ways to get what you want, legitimately. Sometimes you need a second chance though.”

Years later, Maria would be as baffled as the Avengers had been about the existence of that thing Clint had wanted, the family Fury had helped him to hide. At that time though, she had just rolled her eyes. She couldn’t bring herself to have any sympathy.

Maria finally did visit Black Widow in her cell, having finally she figured—using Clint’s words—discovered her desire to grow more acquainted with the figurative taste of broccoli. She told herself she had no intention of gloating either, like she had fantasized about for so long. No, she just wanted to formally meet Black Widow, talk with the woman who had lived in her mind long enough she wondered if they already were friends.

When Maria entered the cell, letting herself in without alerting Black Widow first, she was sitting cross-legged on the floor, leaning her back against the metal bed frame.

Black Widow looked up from the book she was reading when Maria stepped in but looked away almost immediately. Maria put her hands up in response.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Maria said.

“Okay,” Black Widow replied, without moving. “And I won’t cause you any harm either.”

A working agreement not to hurt one another was the first words Maria and Natasha had exchanged, and in retrospect, Maria wondered how well they had stuck to them. Probably well, she reasoned.

Until recently.

Maria then had reached to Black Widow to shake her hand. Black Widow reciprocated, but her grip was weaker than Maria had judged it would be so she ended up shaking Black Widow’s arm as if it were a streamer fluttering.

As soon as she realized what she was doing, Maria yanked her arm away. “Sorry, sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.” Maria hadn’t, and that thought made her want to smack her palm to her face. She hadn’t meant to hurt Black Widow.

“I’m okay.” Black Widow said quietly, head bowed.

The cell was quiet because Maria hadn’t had any fucking idea what to say at that point, and it seemed Black Widow wasn’t going to look up again, let alone speak. Maria wanted to ask her why she was on the floor, but she worried it might be too personal to begin with so maybe she should start by just seeing if Black Widow was comfortable, if her wounds hurt any less. At future visits, Maria and Black Widow would go on to discuss these things, but at that moment, Maria imagined Black Widow might have said “I’m okay” or gone to sit on the bed because she figured it was what Maria wanted her to do so Maria just smiled even though Black Widow was still looking away.

“You like to read?” Maria finally asked, titling her head to the book in Black Widow’s lap.

Black Widow nodded. “Thank Agent Barton again for me. He brought me some books in Russian.” She fanned the book to show Maria.

“You can’t read English?” Maria asked almost immediately after Black Widow had finished her sentence. That was the spy in Maria talking, who up until she had entered that cell and met the small woman within it, would have loved to learn about any such imperfection.

“I can read English.” Black Widow spoke with an accent, which she probably disguised on most missions so Maria thought she was hearing as close to Black Widow’s actual voice as the woman could speak.

“Oh.”

“I appreciate that Agent Barton brought me the Russian book regardless.”

“Oh.” Maria repeated. If anyone but Black Widow had said that, Maria might have thought she was intimating home sickness, that the books in her native language brought her comfort.

“They’re just folk tales,” Black Widow added. “Nothing menacing, I assure you.”

“Okay.” It hadn’t occurred to Maria that Black Widow might be reading something hostile. “I didn’t think…”

“It’s okay if you had. I have earned that suspicion.”

“That is true.” It had crossed Maria’s mind that Black Widow might have said that to garner sympathy, and if even if she hadn’t, Maria thought it best to avoid falling into any trap of manipulation.

“You’ve done some things…” Her sentence is interrupted by the desire to laugh, which she manages to repress with a grin. Maria understands then that they could laugh about it—not the atrocities Black Widow had committed or SHIELD’s rightful caution certainly, but the manifestation of those things in their interaction in that cell, and for all the times Maria had refused to brush aside the slightest transgression, she found herself giggling then.

Black Widow raised a single eyebrow—an adorable thing Maria had never stopped noticing Natasha could do.

“I’m Maria,” Maria said, “Maria Hill. Hill is where the Agent Hill comes from, which is what Fury and Barton might have referred to me as, so you know.”

Black Widow smiled at Maria’s phrasing. “Yes, Director Fury did, but to be honest, Agent Barton did call you Maria a few times so I figured.”

Maria shook her head, saying “that Barton” under her breath. “So you know Barton’s Clint then?”

“He told me as much.”

“He called you Natalia.”

Black Widow bowed her head again. “Yes, my name is Natalia—Natalia Romanova. Not Widow—that’s not where the Widow in Black Widow comes from.”

“I know where the Widow comes from.” Maria snapped—before she had processed Natalia was trying to make a joke mirroring her own earlier words. She forces herself to laugh.

“…probably shouldn’t be joking about that anyway.”

“No, no, it’s your name… it’s your name?

“Didn’t you just say you knew where the name came from?” Contemporary Natasha would have puked her ribs then, but they were some ways from that point then.

Maria shrugged. “I’m letting you talk for yourself. Go for it.” At some point, she had sat beside Natalia, and now she was pulling her knees to her chest with her head turned to the other woman. Maria was just thinking it was better to let Natalia do the talking than her stumbling over words.

“Well, my given name is Natalia. I won, I guess you could say, the title Black Widow. Mostly because I did what they told me to do—really, really well.”

Maria rubbed her head.

“Did I say something wrong?”

“No, no… it’s just… go on.”

In the future, Maria would be able to say she “won” the title Deputy Director by go figure, doing what Fury wanted her to do and doing it better than anyone else. Or no… that’s wasn’t quite it. Just as Natalia went on to excel as an agent of SHIELD without anyone telling her what to do—Maria could vouch for this because she tried to tell her what to do and wasn’t always obeyed—Maria could run things on her own as well.

“…it is just…do you want that title? I mean name. Do you want that name? Now anyway?” Maria couldn’t have predicted the direction her awkward brain was taking this first meeting.

Natalia opened her moth to respond but didn’t. She stared at Maria, her expression slowly morphing into confusion. “It’s fine, I guess. It was nice of Fury and Barton to acknowledge my given name.”

“So Natalia then?”

Natalia nodded.

***

It was six months after Clint had brought Black Widow to SHIELD, and Natalia and Clint had just returned from a mission—the inaugural mission of strike team delta who in celebrating their first mission had decided to throw themselves into the heart of a known dangerous region without the promise of any extraction.

“It’ll be fun.” Natalia had said, and Clint had agreed “of course!” but he had looked pale as if he were sick with concern over what he had gotten himself into by having Natalia has his partner.

Maria had been waiting at a bar for Natalia. She’d given her 24 hours to settle and sleep before arranging to meet her.

“What’s this?” Natalia had asked as she sat at the stool beside Maria.

“Oh, I ordered you a fruity cocktail—the fruitest in fact. I figured your body could use the sugar after that intense work-out.” Sugar consumption wasn’t exactly how the human body recovered, but Maria would have felt weird just giving her vodka considering her other surprise. She nudged the cocktail glass in front of Natalia.

“I meant this. But thank you.” Natalia held up a little wrapped box.

Maria hummed, taking a sip of her drink.

Natalia squinted at the tag attached to the silver paper, then turned to Maria. “Natasha?”

“Yes, Natasha,” Maria responded.

Holding the tag, Natasha closed her eyes and smiled.

“Do you like it?” Maria perched on the edge of the round stool, feet on the circle around the legs.

Without opening her eyes, Natasha picked a cherry from the drink and popped it in her mouth. “You really are as practical as they say, Hill, giving me a gift I will use every day.”

“That’s why I got you that cocktail as well. It’s got three cherries, Natasha, three.” Maria held up three fingers, but Natasha still hadn’t opened her eyes.

“Why though?”

“It’s been half a year since you joined SHIELD…”

“The name, Maria.”

“Do you not remember how Russian names work? It hasn’t been that long… Natasha is—”

“I remember… my parents used to… I figured no one would ever care enough to use it so I’d never hear it again.”

“Well, I figured since you were never too excited about Natalia, you might like the version that expresses affection more.”

Natasha finally opened her eyes and took a long sip of the drink.

“Name’s a name.” The glass’ bottom clinked on the bar.

“I already alerted SHIED it is your name now.”

“Is the box empty then?”

“An empty box would be terribly wasteful. I would never…”

Natasha peeled the tape from where Maria had folded the paper. Inside the box were vodka-infused chocolates. “Oh nice, finally something without half a bag of sugar in it.”

“Shall we make a toast then… to Natasha?”

“God no! Don’t ever suggest anything like that again.” Natasha held the box of chocolates to Maria so she could take a piece. “We’ll toast, but we’ll toast to the hope that there are many more missions where Clint and I get to infiltrate our worst enemies with no exit strategy.”

“You know that makes me job harder, right?”

“Hey, the toast was your idea.” Natasha knocks her chocolate off Maria’s piece and pops it into her mouth.

Maria would come to understand that the unspoken could say it all between them. At least until they were both able to speak.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On Nat's backstory: I want to say the original way given in the comics for how Natasha ended up at the Red Room was a fire that killed her parents, but I interrupted how she spoke about returning to Russia to find them as meaning she didn't know yet they were dead so I wrote with that in mind instead. Also, if you haven't seen the extended scene of Peggy's Funeral, you should watch it. It makes clearer Natasha's emotional journey through-out and makes what happens with the Avengers all the more painful for her. 
> 
> As I currently see it, there will be two more chapters. The next three weeks will be stressful for me as the semester ends, but after that, I should be able to finish this off. And really, Nat and Maria will only ever be in love going forward... Because that is what I want to see : )


	16. Sympathy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, the resolution! This chapter was a challenge to write...
> 
> Anyhow, this is the last chapter. I will post a short "epilogue," but aside from that, we're done here : )

Maria’s room was cold. She hadn’t opened the blinds or switched on the light or gotten out of bed to turn up the thermostat. Maria was cold, lying under her blanket wearing only a thin, sleeveless undershirt and underwear. Before her relationship with Natasha, she had gone to sleep in the winter in long pajama pants and shirt, but now she slept almost naked because she had   wanted to feel the tickle of the bedding on her bare skin, the way she had felt Natasha.

Maria felt at home in the cold. The day she was born had been a cold day—when she looked it up on the archived weather reports, it said -30—with prolonged darkness even though it was on the side of the winter solstice when the days were getting longer. There’s a day toward the beginning of January that’s been called the most depressing day of the year. Whether Maria had entered the world on that precise day, it had left frostbite on her soul, and she could only assume the agony that made her toss and turn in the middle of the day and night years into her adult life was phantom pain from the dead tissue.

Maria knew Natasha would encourage her to get out of bed, to at least go for a walk or to say hi to whomever she encountered. She imagined Natasha reaching to her in the dim room, sitting on the edge of the bed stroking her hair. Natasha would whisper that she loved her, that she would stay next to Maria until she felt better, but she would feel better if she turned on a light, washed her face, got dressed. Maria would avoid eye contact with Natasha, but she would know Natasha would be frowning, her other features tense. Maria frowned into her pillow. Even in her daydreams, she believed Natasha. Regardless that Natasha’s betrayal had condemned her to this misery.

***

A few years before the Avengers, Natasha had returned from a mission without completing it. Prior to that time, since joining SHIELD, Natasha had encountered no such circumstances. Any mission they assigned to her Natasha could tackle—usually with a flourish, like an extra captured criminal or leads on the next bad guy. But then Natasha had returned empty-handed. She could not located the target, but insisted on staying until she could achieve her object despite the infestation of enemies in the region. Clint and she had survived because he dragged her out, hours before a fire bomb tore through the area, but afterward, Natasha had refused to speak with Clint. By that time, Maria and Clint had reconciled. Natasha was friends with Clint, and Maria was friends with Natasha so Maria became friends with Clint. Maria had gained numerous friends that way

“What good am I if I fail at the one thing I can do?” Natasha didn’t verbalize this idea in that many words, not at that time or ever, but Maria came to commiserate with the sentiment. She’s found Natasha in a gym in the basement beating a bag gloves, blood streaking through her clenched fists. Maria hadn’t replied to Natasha because Natasha hadn’t acknowledged Maria when she entered the gym, but Maria stood and watched Natasha torture herself in the guise of training until she had exhausted her energy, her form slipping and her punches making her wince more than the bag sway. Her blood stained the vinyl, dried into crusty, dark red splotches.

When Natasha noticed Maria, Maria had nodded at her as if Natasha had been an old friend with whom she made eye contact across a noisy room—an acknowledgement. Words would have failed them both then.

***

When Maria finally returned to her apartment, her head throbbed from lack of sleep and hitting it earlier. She left her bag on the table and took a bottle of whisky from the shelf. The room shifted as she sat on a stool as if the weight she’d been carrying in her head had rushed to the front.

Despite her job requiring it, Maria hadn’t wanted to read the details of this final report on the actions of Black Widow in her prior life. If only she could have dropped it in the shredder with the news of that day’s catastrophes she had staved off, Maria had thought, could have shoved all the piles off her desk because it was a new day, and she didn’t need the reports shrieking “how could you” haunting her. But Maria had to prioritize SHIELD over her avoidance of cognitive dissonance and so she paged through the report an agent had submitted pertaining to a mission she had completed. The team had apprehended an “partner” of Black Widow’s. He had racked a whole page of solo crimes, but in the interrogation, he insisted on describing a serious of jobs he can done with Black Widow. If SHIELD had known about the incidents he detailed, Maria had forgotten, which she doubted she had. She had obsessed over the files prior to Black Widow’s capture.

“…we blew the place up… came back later to shift through the rubble… no, not to look for survivors… we never left anyone alive… that’s an issue of pride… also, witnesses, you gotta take those out, no matter who it is.”

As Maria had listened to him speak earlier, she reasoned he must be boasting, straight up lying maybe. Maria imagined rumors had spread—despite SHIELD’s insistence on silence and keeping Natalia secure—that Black Widow had defected. Or the other criminals gossiped that SHIELD had captured Black Widow, and she broke under their torture—one final insult. Since SHELD had capture him too, on the tip of Black Widow, he would drag her through the mud one last time.

“Agent… Hill?” a voice asked. “Agent Hill… are you alright, Ma’am?”

Then Maria came to—or re-associated—whatever word captured the moment when the immediate environment felt real again to Maria, and she realized she’d been knocking her forehead against the glass of the one-way mirror. The pain hadn’t grabbed Maria’s attention sooner, but the other agent had watched her, and she now smiled at Maria as if to express concern or bury fear. The agent had gone to comfort Maria like she would comfort any other person who expressed the emotions Maria had, but she had caught herself, and her arm hovered in the air between them. Then too Maria had the reputation as cold and severe so she couldn’t blame the agent for suppressing her instinctual response.

“Of course,” Maria replied. If Maria’s actions had worried the other agent, the agent’s observation of her worried Maria more. “Their indifference to other lives just enrages me…”

“And we’ve seen quite a bit of that lately… since Black Widow’s knowledge allowed us to drag all these low-lives in. I understand it can be rough to hear them speak though…”

“Natalia.” Maria whispered as the agent said Black Widow.

“Hmmm?” The agent watched Maria.

Maria stepped away from the window and the other agent. “Have this report to me by the end of the day.”

“Yes, Ma’am.” The agent had winced.

Maria would not tolerate sympathy.

Sitting in her office after the agent had brought her the report in the early evening, Maria bit her lip and opened the report. She read it word-by-word, and it was like removing a bandage she had slapped onto a gaping wound, taking with it the scab that had grown, revealing fresh blood. Maria couldn’t finish. She flung the file off her desk—although it didn’t travel far. Some of the papers floated in front of her where they had started. She rubbed her temples, sore from bouncing them off bullet proof glass, and she wondered if Natalia had finished her training for the day.

Maria stood and rushed to the door, only stopping after she crossed the threshold into the hall. Back in her office, she tossed aside some scattered pages until she found the one with the prisoner’s statement.

When Maria arrived, Natalia was lying on her stomach reading. Maria saw the captive/ trainee when she could carve out the time, and when she thought the fewest other personnel would know of her visits—but she feared she would have to stop as Natalia got more accustomed to SHIELD and her isolation and discomfort subsided. Maria could feign a ranking officer who visited a recruit to ensure they settled in, but that routine could stretch only so far.

Natalia sits up when Maria approaches. Sometimes Maria smiles when Natalia shifts from the position she found comfortable to lounge in while alone—aside from the camera, which no one monitored anymore because no one considered her a threat—to a more professional pose. But that day, Maria grimaced as she clenched the page.

“It’s true,” Natalia said as Maria dropped the paper to her bed. Her eyebrows scrunched, she looked at Maria. “You knew this. Isn’t this why you wanted me dead?”

“I…” Maria eyed the young woman sitting beside her, or she eyed Natalia’s thumbs as they rubbed the thin fabric of the cardigan she wore over her pajamas.

Natalia takes the page so she can better read it. “Shit… this was a while ago. Four years, I think.”

“You remember… every?”

“Been trying to lately—while I lay here watching sitcom reruns. It’s the least I can do, right?” She looked down. “Hey,” she said, smiling at Maria, “What were you doing four years ago?”

Maria shrugged. “I was still in school, I think.”

“Fun?”

Maria shrugged again. She hadn’t done much beside train and study in college, so four years ago, Maria could say, her life resembled how it did then, just changes in her responsibilities. Whether she considered it “fun” never concerned her. In fact, the question baffled her. She couldn’t expect Natalia to know that yet though.

“SHIELD have a good school?” Natalia knew Maria’s history as well as SHIELD’s structure and facilities. It was small talk.

“I actually went to school with the intent of becoming an officer in the Marines.”

Natalia didn’t continue the conversation, and Maria wondered if Natalia had intended her last question to be rhetorical. If so, she had embarrassed herself responding

Maria recognizes gloom in Natalia’s eyes.

“I’m not sure what I remember, really,” Natalia closed her eyes. “What I did, that is, as Black Widow. I disassociated a lot, if you know what that means. My mind held the mission’s details, my surroundings, past experiences, processing them and spitting out instructions my body could perform… while I saw the scene in wisps, remembering maybe a painful moment. Until I needed to recall what happened, then I could spit it out, but I never knew what I said.”

Maria nodded. Disassociation sounded familiar.

Maria crumpled the paper in her fist. The crinkling grabbed Natalia’s attention, and she watched Maria with wide eyes. Maria wondered if Natalia found her to be a curiosity as well.

“Do you regret agreeing to this?”

“… I’m enjoying thinking about all the terrible people who have been brought to justice. Even if you had decided to kill me, it would have been a nice final thought… that despite everything else, I did something right…”

Maria felt the rough edges of the crumped paper with the account of Natalia’s violent crimes written on it against her palm, and she felt Natalia cup her own palm over her fist.

“You don’t have to worry, Maria. I’m not manipulating you or taking advantage of Clint or Fury’s pity.”

Maria thought she felt Natasha squeeze her hand. She could disintegrate into the air in the room.

“I don’t want any sympathy or pity. It is all condescending.” Natalia continued. “Save the concerned looks and soft voices. I can prove I don’t need it, that I can useful to SHIELD.”

Maria frowned. Natalia’s feelings toward sympathy sounded familiar as well. “We know.”

Natasha yanked her hand off Maria’s and folds them in her lap. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have…”

“No, no… it is instinct.” It is instinct to want to touch someone to comfort them, and Natalia didn’t yet know, like the agent had, that Maria existed outside that bit of humanness.

 

Natalia snorted. “Sure, instinct. I’ve definitely been programed to console. Can I?” She tugs at the paper in Maria’s fist. Maria loosens her grip.

“Like I said, my instinct is carrying out orders, usually atrocious ones, but missions I must complete all the same.” Natalia flicks the wad of paper across the room. It bounces off the metal leg of the small desk and then against the rim of the waste basket before dropping in it.

Maria flashed back to her failed attempt at flinging the report, to an assortment times she had tossed trash—or clothes into the laundry basket—and never once succeeded. Her aim outside of shooting never improved.

That evening, Maria sat on her sofa a frozen dinner on the coffee table in front of her, still wearing her uniform, boots included. Natalia hadn’t asked her if she regretted her decision to not punish her, probably, Maria thought, because Natalia didn’t ruminate on their interactions as Maria did. Had she had killed Natalia at the time before she met her in the cell for the first time, Maria doubted she’d have given it a second thought. But Maria had to ask herself if she could live with herself if she struck Natalia from her life now.

That night Maria had bashed her head against the coffee table’s fake wood, jiggling the gelatinous blobs of peas and congealed grease in the microwavable meal. It soothed her—like scratching an itch with a knife or running steaming water over frozen hands. The food was still frozen at its core. Maria could see with her head on the table frost on a meatball, freezer burn probably because she never knew how long she left anything in her refrigerator or cabinets.

She doubted she could sleep but regretted each second of consciousness, and she didn’t eat. She curled up on the couch, eyes on the dust-coated television across from her, her mind on Natalia.

“Come to gloat some more?” Natalia asked as Maria entered her room. After that first time, Maria buzzed before coming in.

“I’m not in a talking mood. I’ll let this speak for itself.” Maria held up a paper bag stained with spots of grease.

“Hmmm?”

“Can I? Maria nods toward the bed on which Natalia now sat. Natalia rests her other pillow against the wall and smooths the blanket. She had two pillows, was a favored prisoner.

“I brought you a cupcake.” Maria reaches into her bag to show Natalia.

“A cupcake?” Natalia takes it, turning it over in her hands as if it were a foreign object whose purpose she was yet to learn.

“Yeah, it is cake batter baked into a paper cup…”

“Why?”

“They cute? Also, far more practical.”

“No. Why did you bring me this?”

Maria had to concede Natalia asked a fair question. That morning, she had sat through an hours long meeting catered by a fancy bakery—who made good cupcakes. As Maria was picking at and eating hers crumb-by-crumb, her mind had drifted to Natalia. Fury had allowed her to train again, and Maria knew because she had devised the training for new recruits the regime would take a toll on Natalia.

“There were extras at a meeting earlier, figured I’d help get them off their hands.”

“They have me training for like 12 hours a day, and you’re bring me sweets…”

“They feeding you well here?” Maria asked after a second of silence filled by Natalia peeling back the wrapper and biting into the cupcake.

“Not this well,” Natalia replied through a mouthful of cake. She had ruined the frosting’s detailed pattern.

Maria remembered Natalia had gotten frosting on the tip of her nose, and she remembered trying not to stare. Had Maria been more assertive (in her personal life), had Natalia not had reflexes that would catch Maria before she could touch her, she would have dabbed the frosting off her nose. But she had sat there not looking at Natalia’s face

“So is that your favorite food now?”

Natalia swallowed and set the last bite of cupcake on the bag. “They told us in the Red Room that the outside world was undisciplined, unfocused, cared about frivolous things. We lived above indulgences and distractions… like having a favorite food.”

How dare this kid challenge her dedication, Maria thought, light-headed with anger. “Discipline, huh, how’s that work out for you?” Maria had a favorite food, a favorite recipe, a favorite pizza and a favorite restaurant where she could get each of her favorite foods. Yet she had Natalia locked in her headquarters, had gotten to choose her fate.

“I could kill you before…” Natalia’s voice faded. She took a book from her table and pushed the crumpled bag where the book had sat. “You get to capture criminals, play the hero… and get the cupcake. How’s that working out for you?” She opens the book and flips through the pages—until Maria grabs it by the spine and yanks it from her grasp.

“How dare you? I…” Maria drops the book in Natalia’s lap.

“Yeah. I thought so. Your mother must be so proud.” Natalia opens the book again.

Maria’s forehead hurt when she pressed it. On the kitchen counter, she saw a bottle of sleeping medication—prescribed because any doctor who knew any snippet of her life would do so. She poured a few pills in her hand and swallowed them dry while returning to the sofa.

A bullet grazes Maria’s waist, close range. If she hadn’t wrestled the hand holding the gun to the side before Black Widow pulled the trigger, the bullet would have blasted through her lung. She gasped as she lunged toward Black Widow and kicked the gun from her hand. It clattered out of Maria’s view, but electricity surged through her. As her muscles twitch, Maria understands the jab she had felt on the side she hadn’t used to kick was caused by the Widow’s Bite, and now Black Widow lifted her boot to stomp on Maria’s chest. Maria rolls to avoid the blow. Black Widow’s heel hits Maria’s side below the ribcage, and she shrieks, but the electricity had paralyzed her vocal chords. The blood in her mouth tasted sweet—like frosting.

Black Widow aims a gun at her. Maria resists the spasms in her eye muscles to stare past the gun, up Black Widow’s clean, untattered combat suit to her eyes—eyes she recognized, that she could not fear.

“Don’t worry. You would not have had to choose whether to kill or capture me. You could do neither because you could never defeat me. You could never win.”

Maria sits wedged in the back corner of a cell, her arms bound by chains so heavy she feared any movement would snap her bones. Across the cell, the bars clatter. The door hits the stone ground.

“Get up, Maria.” Black Widow orders.

“I can’t…” The chains wrap her arms past her elbows.

Black Widow shrugs. “I came to let you out. Not listen to you cry.”

“Out of where?” Maria struggles, lifts her core, but she can’t move her arms. “What have I done?”

Black Widow shrugs again. “What haven’t we done?”

“We?”

Black Widow laughs, those eyes shining. “If you’re not coming…”

Footsteps thunder outside the bars. Black Widow glances behind her, then at Maria who had thrown her into the corner, unable to free her arms. She darts off as the guards swarm into the cell.

Dreams, Maria knew, brought on by the medication that had allowed her to sleep at all, as real—or unreal—as her memories.

On her fifteenth birthday, months after she had fled her father, Maria’s aunt had come into the living room where Maria sat watching television and asked her what she wanted to do to celebrate her birthday.

“What?” Maria had head what her aunt had said.

“It’s your birthday, Maria.”

“So you have said. For me, it has always been the day when I had the most to fear, follow by a few days where I had some peace.”

Her aunt had sat beside her and turn off the television.

“Hey, I wanted to see how that ended.” Maria took her feet from the coffee table and brought them so she was sitting cross-legged. Her aunt received far more channels than her father had.

“That same episode will be on next week.” Her aunt ran her hand through Maria’s hair. “You didn’t answer, sweetheart.”

No one had ever asked Maria what she wanted. Her father didn’t provide what she needed, let alone anything she might like—in fact, she wanted her to not have what she wanted, and other adults in her life told her what she needed to do so she could have a future beyond delinquency.

“I’m not hungry.” Maria said.

Her aunt looked her watch. “We can wait a while longer if you prefer, but I wanted to leave before it got too dark.”

“I’d prefer to do nothing at all.”

“And that’s why we’re going out.” She kissed Maria on her head. “Put your shoes on.”

Maria obeyed, slipping on and tying the new boots her aunt had gotten her—black leather that went past her ankles.

“Why aren’t you mad… sad? How can you…?” Maria asked her aunt the thought she had on her mind since her aunt first asked. Her aunt had taken her for pizza. She had gone with Maria’s mother when they younger, and their mother had worked late, Maria’s mother using money she earned from her job at a bakery.

“We don’t have to talk about this now, Maria. You can tell me about your favorite television show, how you like your new school… Is there anything you’re excited about?”

“Why would I be excited about anything?”

Her aunt sighed. “I miss my sister, Maria. I dread this time of year. But that doesn’t mean I forget about you—knowing you are unsafe, as well as dreading this day, missing your mother and sad. We can celebrate your birthday on any other day of the year if you’d like—as long as you know that you get to matter too.”

Maria had gotten up and wandered to the bathroom then. She glanced at her reflection in the mirror in the moments before her aunt came to her and saw her face streaked with tears and the eyes that would one day make Black Widow’s appear familiar.

There was enough of the Black Widow in Maria that she had sympathy for Natalia.

The next time Maria visits Natalia, she said before anything else “I’m going to take you out.”

Maria had asked Fury, and he had replied “Other agents ask for their birthdays off… and you come here after having never requested anything, wanting to bring to lunch the woman who a few months ago you wanted dead.”

“Can I, though?”

“Have fun, Hill.”

People needed to stop reminding her Clint’s choice had enraged her, Maria had thought. Her job required her to make those shitty, heartless decisions, and sure, now everyone recognized the asset Natalia presented, but before, she challenged SHIELD, and Maria had had to save lives. Then taking out Black Widow would have protected the most lives. Now Natalia could fight those criminals, protect lives in her own right. And now Maria wanted Natalia to join her for lunch, at a restaurant Maria enjoyed. For someone like her who had been trained to adapt to changing circumstances and respond accordingly, it made sense.

“That is if you want to…” Maria had not considered that Natalia would refuse.

“I haven’t left this building since Clint brought me here.”

“I don’t think outside has changed much—same sky, trees, air…” Maria bit her lip to shut herself up.

Natalia smiled. “Okay, Agent Hill. I’m under your command. Take me where you will.”

“It’s cold. Put a sweater on.”

“Irrelevant to me.”

“Well, you won’t be as effective in training if you get sick so it isn’t irrelevant to me.”

“I can’t get sick.”

“Then put the damn sweater on so we don’t get weird looks because you’re wearing a t-shirt in the winter.”

Maria drives them to an Italian restaurant that served her favorite pizza in D.C (not in the entire country though; she had to travel to reach her favorite restaurant). Since the dinner rush had ended they had the place to themselves, and when they enter, the waitress tells them to sit wherever they wanted. Natalia follows Maria to the booth she had occupied herself in all her past visits—in a corner where the restaurant’s dim lights faded.

“Ah, forgot to grab menus.” Maria looked to the front of the restaurant. The waitress had gotten up from where she sat reading, but Maria saw no reason for her to go out of her way while she could grab them herself. “Sit down. I’ll be right back.”

Natalia stood by the booth, arms crossed. “Uh, I can go. You’re already sitting. Plus, I can sneak there and back without anyone noticing.”

Hah, Maria thought, Natalia had held on to their competition from the last time Maria visited her. She nods and Natalia crept toward the front of the dining room.

“You brought a friend today?” While Maria watched Natalia dart from shadow to shadow—Maria reasoned the spy missed spying after months of SHIELD cooping in her room and thus needed to stretch her muscles—the waitress, who Maria knew from repeated encounters, had come to the table.

“A recruit,” she replied as the waitress set glasses of water on coasters. The first few times the same waitress had served Maria she had avoided small talk. She couldn’t go around boasting about her position in SHIELD or venting about the struggles of the job. She could invent a fake identity and improvise a personal history, but she preferred to avoid talking and thinking when she could disconnect. Except the days when she did want to talk.

“Who is new in town, doesn’t know any places—“

Natalia rejoining them interrupts Maria’s explanation. She held two worn, laminated menus and the floppy, paper kids menus along with a pack of green, blue and red crayons.

“Are you expecting another person?” The waitress squinted at Natalia.

“No…” Maria grabbed the menus from Natalia and pushed her shoulder to indicate she should sit. “We’ll both have Mountain Dew.”

“That your secret?” Natalia slides the kids menu and crayons back in front of her.

“Remember you asked about school? It was my secret then, my first companion on mind-numbing, sleep deprived nights. I’m immune to caffeine now though.”

“Respect.” Natalia was tracing the red crayon through the maze on the menu, staring at the dark, waxy line. She stops when the waitress returns with their drinks.

Maria orders a crispy crust pizza and another deep dish, both cheese.

After the waitress leaves, Natalia scribbles on the menu over the word search—until the crayon’s tip cracks. She crumples the menu into tight ball so Maria couldn’t see the crayon marks or the letters. Natalia’s face had the same grey tint as the paper. But Maria didn’t ask Natalia how she felt, if she wanted to talk or touch her clenched fist. She scans the walls of the restaurant she had memorized on past visits, when she had also stared at the walls.

Later when the waitress brings them their pizza, Natalia eats—although she moves no other muscle beside her arms and mouth. Maria knew Natalia had gone to restaurants before; an incident where the Black Widow had assassinated a party in a French restaurant came to mind.

***

In the time since Natasha had told Maria to think about it—it meaning them?—Natasha had sent two text messages and left a voice mail.

“Maria, I will give you space, but I needed to apologize for not being more upfront with you. I did have feelings for Banner, and I did devote my time and energy to locating him after he disappeared. I missed him and was ruminating on whether I could have gone too, had I not forced him to fight Ultron with us. I understand that I hurt you, why you interpreted my actions as taking advantage, rebounding. I regret not considering how my recent history would affect you, regardless of my intentions.

I do love you, Maria I have appreciated our time together… recently and since we first met. I should have confided in you sooner—maybe then I would have realized I couldn’t have… No, forget that. Just take care of yourself, Maria, and I hope to see you soon.”

Maria sat on the edge of her bed. Her phone told her she had slept—tossed and turned—through the afternoon and into the evening and that Pepper had expected something from her, and she had reminded Maria of this work earlier that day, yesterday and the day prior. Maria couldn’t recall if she completed that task. She rose form her bed and opens the window, letting freezing air seep through the screen, prickle her bare skin. Snow fell from a murky, yellow sky, visible through the dark under the flood lights. Leaving her window open, she returns to her bed.

Maria responds to Pepper first. “I’ve had a rough few days, Pepper. Forgive me. I will check on that now and get back to you as soon as I can.” Pepper understood, Maria knew.

After sending the message, Maria put on pants, a t-shirt and socks. Her drawers hung half open. When she had dug for the cloths she’d been sleeping in a few days ago, she had failed to shut them. Natasha had strewn her own cloths over the chair, left some others in a pile on the floor. She flips the light switch and sees her bed unmade, the desk covered in work, and she imagines she looks no less in disarray.

She notices the light on her phone blinking. Pepper had responded. “Good to here from you! I was starting to worry. It’s late, no need to push yourself too hard.” She used the colon close parentheses as well.

Pepper would tell her to take the night off despite the uncertainty about whether Maria had done what she asked. Maria receives another message from her. “Girl troubles, again?” This time the message ends with the semi-colon close parentheses. She knew Maria must have a problem—without Maria having mentioned it. She wondered if Pepper meant girl troubles or as code for depression.

“Unfortunately. And I’ve been feeling down.” Maria typed—to clarify to Pepper. Before hitting send, she rereads the messages. It defamiliarizes itself to Maria, as if auto-correct had swapped this sentence for “What? No, I’m fine, of course. Maria perceived the whole world to have morphed that way, and it made her question her senses. Her world had been rearranged while her thoughts distracted her, and she lost the ability to navigate it by instinct. But she appreciated Pepper on the other end of the line, answering her without knowing many of the details of Maria’s situation. She hit send.

Maria played Natasha’s message again focusing on her voice more than the content of her words. Natasha had left her more inspiring messages. She presses the green button to reply.

“Maria? Maria, are you okay?”

“Hi, Natasha.” She pauses, to give her a chance to say hi back, but Natasha says nothing, maybe waiting for her to answer her question.

“I’m fine. Why wouldn’t—“ Maria stops herself. Natasha and she could avoid that route. “Hey, what are you doing? Are you busy?”

“Maria… Shush, I’m just glad to hear your voice. I missed you.”

“I know.”

“…I… I was video chatting with Clint most of the evening, but since then, I have been sitting here.”

“Same… same… been watching it snow.” Same, she thought as she spoke, I missed you as well—your touch, your support. “Let’s go for a walk then.” She shivered. “Outside. I need to breathe the fresh air.”

“You just said you have been watching it snow. So you know it is cold.”

“What happened to ‘the cold is irrelevant. Nothing here compares with Russia?’”

“That doesn’t mean I like it.”

“Natasha.”

“I’ll wear a hat.”

“Okay, I’ll meet you…”

“And I’ll bring vodka.”

“Yeah…”

“You haven’t eaten today, have you?”

“I’m putting my boots on now.”

“Maria.”

“I’ll grab a snack on my way out. I’ll see you in a second.” Maria ends the call before Natasha could respond. Before she leaves, she shuts her window and punches the thermostat up.

Maria is standing by the door, munching on a protein bar when Natasha approaches her. “What’s up?” She tips her head back.

Natasha grinned. She had worn a hat and carried a bottle of vodka by the neck in her gloved hand. “You know, it is not too late to talk in the hot tub instead.”

“Later. We can have a five course meal in the hot tub.” Maria leads Natasha outside by the elbow.

Natasha had not exaggerated the cold. Maria guessed the temperature hovered in the single digits. Enough snow had accumulated that their feet sank with a crunch and left craterous foot prints. Maria breathed.

“It was -30 the day I was born.” Maria said.

“It was colder the day I was born.”

“Nah, I bet it was unseasonably warm.”

They chuckled as they walked in silence, Natasha passing the vodka to Maria after she had taken a drink.

“You didn’t do anything wrong, Natasha.” Maria began again.

“You don’t have to say that, Maria. I hurt you.”

“Let me finish. With Banner, you weren’t wrong to put yourself out there, to open up to him. He hurt you, reciprocating and then leaving. Without any concern for how you would take it.”

“This isn’t about…”

“You felt foolish?”

Maria sees Natasha’s breath as she sighs, white and wispy. “… well, yeah, wouldn’t you?”

“That’s what I’m trying to get at. When I found out about you and Banner, I felt foolish and embarrassed… that I believed you, I guess.”

Natasha stops and places her gloves on Maria’s shoulders. “And I caused you to feel that way. I’m sorry. That’s what I’m getting at.”

“No. It isn’t that simple.” Maria walks starts walking again. While they had stopped, snow had fallen on the tip of her boots. Specks of black showed through the glistening white.

“Remember when I took you to that restaurant? The first time you left SHIELD HQ after…”

“We’ve gone many places together. Like right now, we’re going nowhere—except crazy walking in the cold.”

“We have… haven’t we?” The still, night air stings Maria’s exposed face. She sips at the vodka, hoping the alcohol will make her face feel flushed. When they don’t speak, she hears the scratch of fabric on fabric as they move, their breathing and footsteps, which had quieted as they trudged through deeper snow along the path Maria could no longer distinguish from the grass.

“I remember,” Natasha’s voice spooks Maria, makes her regret wandering into the emptiness. Then she wonders if Natasha had spoken. She hears the echo of Natasha’s voice in her head, but each time it reverberated, it changed, until what remained haunted Maria. She grabs Natasha’s arm. She needed proof that Natasha walked beside her.

“Are those mittens?” Natasha holds Maria’s hand in front of them.

“Yeah. With mittens, you get the added benefit of the body heat from your other fingers.”

“Oh, Maria…”

“Before, when I said I felt bad for you, that wasn’t right, or fair. I had asked you your favorite food, and then I snapped at you when you replied that you never had that luxury. I was insecure. I took it as an attack. I still am. And I still might.”

“I do have a favorite food now though. So don’t worry about it.”

“What? You said a few months ago you didn’t. Did you just not want to tell me? Is it embarrassing?”

“We both remember conversations word-by-word, don’t we?”

“Comes in handy.”

“No, I don’t know. I guess my favorite food or anything is situational, and I’m not sure if that is the same as my identity being situational. Which is what I’ve wanted to stop since Cap pointed it out. Go figure. I can’t change. My responses still depend on what the other person wants to hear. You say you’re still insecure. I say I am still not the same thing to different people.”

“Maybe so. Maybe we are what we are.” Maria kicks the snow. The cold had crept in or the allure of the snowy night had snuck out. “But it wasn’t pity. I know pity is the greatest insult for us. I remembered how people had reached out to me, and I wanted to share that with you.”

“Thank you.” Natasha leans against Maria, and Maria lays an arm around her, pulls her closer against her puffy coat.

“Are you really cold?”

“Honestly… no, not as cold as I wish I was. I’d rather freeze than know I can’t.”

Maria hugs Natasha with her other hand. The snow that had frozen in Natasha’s hair touches Maria’s numb face as she buries it in the loose hair that sticks out from her hat.

“I was scared that night. I knew people wanted to kill me—and would kill you and anyone else if they could. I didn’t want to be responsible for anyone violence. Maria, I told you I was abducted as a kid, right, so I had had one person or another watching and controlling me since that day. When I was living in the room in SHIELD HQ, I was still surveilled, but then we were outside, and I was free. Worse yet, I was probably safe, safe and free. And, not alone. I hadn’t gone out with a friend… since my first mission, when I had to kill my best friend.”

“To be fair, I hadn’t ever gone to that restaurant with anyone else…”

Natasha swats at a snowflake that had landed on Maria’s nose. She’s smiling through tears.

“Don’t cry. Not here. The tears will freeze on your face, or freeze your eyes shut. Hold on until we’re warm.” Maria tightens her grip on the shaking Natasha. Natasha tilts her head back as if the movement will hold the tears in.

“I never second-guessed my decision to join SHIELD, but I regretted that Clint didn’t shot me He could have—at close range. The arrow would have pierced my heart. I’d been trained to survive, but once you guys had me, when I was the safest I had been in a long time, I found it hardest to survive. I got to live, while I never gave others that chance. And I made it worse with each act of kindness I accepted, but I couldn’t resist it.” Natasha rubs her teary eyes with gloveless fingers. “How is that okay?”

“It’s not okay. That’s why we rescued you, you know, so they wouldn’t claim one more life. Clint’s wisdom, not mine. Now come on, we don’t belong out here. We should have gone to the hot tub. I wanted to apologize. I wasn’t trying to remind you of terrible times. I’m sorry, Nat.”

Natasha stops Maria as she turns to hurry home. “Don’t Maria. This wasn’t about me. Did you say what you wanted? I’m okay. Did you get enough fresh air?”

“Almost. And I’m sure this is hypocritical but… Never mind. I was going to ask you to not hold in things, but that isn’t fair.” She hugs Natasha one more, rubbing her back although she doubted Natasha could feel it through the layers of clothing. Natasha peers up at Maria, grinning. They both laugh.

“Think we can run?” Maria squeezes Natasha’s hand between her thumb and the fingers of her mitten, ready to dash over their neat, albeit less deep foot prints.

“Is it a race?”

“It’s a joint endeavor to not slip, fall on our faces and die.”

Natasha and Maria’s quick footsteps kick up snow, disguising the path they had taken.

“And it is a race,” Maria yells into the air that hits them as they run.

As they approach the entrance, Maria slides on the snow. Natasha collides into her, throwing her arms around Maria’s waist to steady herself.

“Let’s go.” Maria coughs when they enter the warm air. “Warm up.” She rubs her runny nose between coughs.

“You eat first.” Natasha stomps the snow caked on her boot onto the door mat.

In the kitchen, Steve is stacking vegetables on a sandwich for a late night snack. Maria’s fingers entwine Natasha’s now that she has use of them again. He glances up with a smile as he slaps another slice of bread on his snack.

“Hi, Maria. Hi, Natasha. Having a good evening?”

Leave it to Steve to not inquire as to why they were wearing coats and holding hands—too polite.

“Leave that stuff out, please. Maria is hungry.” Natasha ignored his question but nudged Maria, which she could feel through her coat.

“Uh, okay.” Steve stood in the same spot, holding the plate in one hand and the sandwich in the other as Natasha arranged ingredients on bread.

“Don’t mind us,” Natasha said. She had gone to the cabinet for a plate. “We had other plans in mind so you can have the kitchen.” She winks at Maria, and Maria nods. They had other plans, but she did want that sandwich.

Maria gets water from the refrigerator. She wondered when those plans would include revealing their relationship to the rest of the team. She wishes she could speak up like Natasha, but inside her winter gear, she was sweating and no quip came to her. She gulps down the water.

They ride the elevator to the basement, Maria eating the sandwich while Natasha unbuttons her coat. She has draped it over her arm by the time they arrive at the pool. She throws the coat on a wooden bench, where Maria sits to finish eating.

“Thank you.” Maria rubs her hands on her pants. Natasha sits beside her and pats her knee, removing her boots with her other hand.

“You okay?”

Maria nods.

“Good.” Natasha grabs Maria’s hat, unravels her scarf and tugs at the coat’s zipper. It opens without catching fabric, exposing the t-shirt Maria had underneath.

Maria longs to play along with Natasha’s advances. She had missed Natasha’s touch, her teasing. But she feels stiff as if the cold had turned her blood into slush and she couldn’t get oxygen fast enough.

“Are you embarrassed about Steve? I am too, but you act like you belong, how you figure people who aren’t self-conscious would until it gets better… Or you forget.”

“Until something reminds you.”

“Something will remind you.”

“I love you, Nat. Everything else aside…”

“You don’t have to Maria. Are you tired?”

“Hah. I spent the last few days sleeping.”

Natasha kisses Maria’s forehead. “Hey. I get it. I’ve been there.”

Maria smiles, slipping the coat off and standing, Natasha’s words reminding her why she was there with Natasha, why she had kept coming back to her.

“We have a few things in common, don’t you think?”

“No one will ever know--”

“…My whole story” Maria unbuttons Natasha’s pants so she can kick them off. “Mine either.” She steps out of her own pants and pulls Natasha’s shirt over her head. They stand on the deck in their bra and underwear

“Shall we?” Maria extends her hand to Natasha, pointing toward the hot tub with the other.

“Okay, Maria Hill. Lead the way.”

They wade into the hot tub. Once in, Maria dunks under the water, stays in the heat until she must breathe.

“My face was cold. And I need to shower anyway.” Maria says after gasping for air. In her hurry for air, she had splashed Natasha. As soon as Maria catches her breath and pushes her wet, tangled hair from her face, Natasha kisses her mouth. Maria feels Natasha’s hands pressing into her back, her tongue in her mouth. Natasha coaxes her until she’s against the hot tub’s wall.

“This is better,” Natasha says. She sits on Maria’s lap, snuggling into her chest.

“Hey, Maria?” Natasha whispers. They’d been sitting, holding one another, relaxed by the rhythm of their breathing and the hot, bubbly water.

Maria hums in response.

“In my message that I left you, I started to tell you something but stopped.”

“That you realized something, but I should never mind.”

Natasha twirls the strap of Maria bra around her finger. “You thought I was using you as a placeholder until Bruce gets back, that I am just using you to hone my emotional skills so I’m ready when the person I truly love gets back. It’s the other way around. I… if there is such a thing as ‘practicing’ romance, then I was practicing with him, figuring out what I wanted before it mattered.

But that isn’t what I realized. I told you once… I couldn’t leave without out. Even if you never developed a romantic interest in me. You didn’t have to care about me the way you did when we first met—not even as a requirement as an agent. Yet you did, and you confused mewith your kindness. Not that I’m saying you’re not an empathetic person but…”

She shrugs. “Until I understood that we’re the same, for better and worse, which even in the circles we hang in is rare.”

“Yeah.” Maria said. “I know.”

“I told you we’d get out of this mess one day. If I had left, I’d have lied to you. Now, I don’t think we’ll escape this mess so I’m lying anyway. But it will be because of who we are. The world needs help. We know we can provide that help.”

Maria looks into Natasha’s eyes—the eyes that had once challenged her, in which she saw herself. Maria’s rubbing Natasha’s shoulder when her hand hits scar tissue. She knew Natasha had gotten that wound during her battle with Clint.

“Did it hurt?” She rubs under Natasha’s shirt at the rough skin.

“What was pain at that point?”

Maria wondered how many times each of them had uttered some incarnation of that through-out their respective lives.

“Pain is pain.” The whole year SHIELD had fallen, Maria had been telling herself pain meant nothing. Pain was an irrelevant outcome of an inescapable, ongoing struggle. Maria entwines her fingers through Natasha’s and squeezes her hand. They’re skin had shriveled from holding hands underwater.

Natasha shook her head but squeezes back at Maria’s hand. “Clint could have killed me, and it would have ended the pain.”

“Barton found another way of ending your pain though.”

“That’s sweet.”

Again, Maria couldn’t take credit for that idea. Clint had beat it into her. “Thank Clint for that one too.”

“You wanted me dead.”

“I wanted you dead.”

Maria and Natasha looked at each other. Natasha’s hair had now grown past her shoulders, and her tight curls grew into waves. Maria strokes it, hoping Natasha could avoid blood and debris damaging it like it had been when they first met.

They both laugh.

“How did you want me to respond? You were consistently outsmarting me.” Maria poked Natasha. “You were hurting my feelings.”

“Maria, I think you accused me of that same thing last week. Is that still how you feel?”

Maria tugs the strap of Natasha’s bra, pulling her so she’s mere centimeters from her face. “Even if I did, I’d have other ways to channel it. She kisses Natasha’s month, nipping at her lower lip.

Natasha brings her hands to Maria’s shoulders, and Maria sighed, taking Natasha’s hand.

“I still don’t deserve your love though. You think I’m kind and courageous, but what are you overlooking to come to that conclusion?”

“When I was sick, you stayed up with me. You beg me to take care of myself.”

“I don’t want you to suffer, Maria. You’re too sweet.”

“Why am I sweet, and you’re not? Other than the fact that you’re not me, and I will never acknowledge anything good about myself, and neither will you.”

“See, if you keep that up, I’ll take it back.”

“Okay, so let’s assume I accept your premise. Does it matter? So maybe you can still be cold, aloof, uncertain of who you are without having to change for the situation, and I’m insecure and defensive, also cold and aloof, stern, and we both have had to do things we wish we didn’t do, have failed, have hurt people. So what? Does that invalidate this?”

“It could be dangerous for us.”

“I told you when we first met that I won’t hurt you.”

“And I agreed. But I have, and I can’t guarantee I won’t again. I love you, Maria, but I have no solid evidence to convince you to trust me.”

“What are you saying?”

“That you’ll have to trust me, you’ll have to trust someone who admits having survived by lying and pretending, shaping my whole self around the situation.”

“That’s what you want?”

“Well, yeah. Of course. I want you to trust me. But you asked me to be more forthcoming, right? I’m trying.”

“I know you’re trying, Nat.”

“So are you.”

“I have my moments.”

Natasha yawned. “Maria?”

“Natasha?”

“How are we going to get upstairs?”

“The same way we came?”

Natasha poked her bare stomach. “I mean we’re drenched.”

“Get dressed enough that if we run into anyone, we’re not naked. We’ll be uncomfortable for like five minutes. We can shower and then go to bed.”

***

The shower sprays Maria and Natasha with steamy water that fogs the glass door and leaves their skin pinkish. Natasha massage Maria’s scalp as she washes her hair. She hadn’t asked Maria how many days had passed since she last showered, just rubbed the body wash into a latter on her skin. Maria didn’t have to befriend Natasha years ago, didn’t have to make time to see Natasha over their years as SHIELD agents, to open to Natasha when she came to her months ago, but she had wanted to.

Maria wraps a towel around her long hair, dresses and gets into her unmade bed. Her room was warm now, but the disorder reminded her of her despair. Natasha couldn’t cure Maria of the depression that lurked within her, consuming her at times, but Maria felt better with Natasha beside her. They empathized with each other, and they could work with that.

 


	17. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just typing up some maybe loose ends...

Maria and Natasha sit at the booth in the corner where the dim lights fade in Maria’s once favorite restaurant in D.C, where Maria had not eaten there since SHIELD’s collapse. But during the second week of the new year, Natasha had suggested a visit to D.C.

Maria picks through their Parmesan fry appetizer for the fry with the most cheese stuck to it. “I like to wonder,” Maria ate the fry, covering her mouth with her hand as she chewed, “who thought I was aligned with Hydra after I disappeared from my routine.”

“Seems like a fun game.” Natasha sips her wine. “Which do you want it to be—go down with old acquiantences as a hero or Hydra?”

“I had this friend… who I imagine has written a memoir about her relations with a Hydra agent, unbeknownst to her.” Maria rubs the grease from the fries on the napkin on her lap.

Natasha kicks her under the table.

“Ow!” Maria shrugs, giving Natasha a crocked grin. She taps her toes on Natasha’s shoe, and Natasha responds with another kick. Under the table, they try to step on one another’s feet—both laughing until Natasha’s knee hits the underside of the table, rattling everything of it. She has to grab her glass so it doesn’t spill. She gulps the remaining wine.

“You know this place is under new management? I saw it when I searched by its address because I forgot the name, but I remember the exact address.”

Maria shook her head. “And the waitress who served us has grown and is probably some politician’s campaign manager now. As long as the food is the same.” She poured Natasha more wine. Natasha took her hand once she finished filling her glass as well.

“I’ll feel bad if I taint your most cherished memory.”

Maria stretched her neck back so she was staring at the ceiling. “I think I’ll make it.”

Later, Maria and Natasha walk along the Potomac, one gloved (or mittened in Maria’s case) stuffed in a coat pocket and the other held between them. On the river, the reflection from the lights along the sidewalk leaves a trail on the dark waves like the afterglow of a shooting star on a clear, night sky. Sheets of ice float, and snowflakes disappear into the surface. Maria feels goosebumps beneath her layers of cloths, a surge of enthusiasm within her. She swings Natasha’s hand.

Two years ago near this spot, Maria had shot helocarriers from the sky, watched as they crashed, inflames, dropping debris onto the city. She had fled D.C to Stark Industries where Pepper wanted her skills, and the authorities couldn’t reach her to threat to lock her up.

“We lost a lot to this city.” Maria stops and turns to Natasha so she could focus on her eyes. Natasha blinks, the green darkened by the night, flickers.

“We have, Maria.” Natasha’s hand cradles her face.

“It’s better this way.”

A snow flake falls on Natasha’s nose. The warmth of her skin will melt it soon enough. Maria smiles, scanning the yellow, clouded sky, the hazy lights from the surrounding buildings, the thin layer of snow covering the side walk and benches, and the river beside them before returning her gaze to Natasha. Maria brushes the snowflake from Natasha’s nose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it. This is the end!
> 
> Thank you to whomever has been reading. This is my first time finishing a longer fic so go, me. : )


End file.
